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London. The coach of Real Madrid holds a seven-point lead in the league, ahead of Barcelona, the world’s most lauded team. Yet he appears to be plotting his own departure.

The stories that Jose Mourinho will quit Spain after this season to return to England could be stopped in an instant. Like the baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson was asked to do, all he needs to do is “Say it ain’t so, Jose.”

The mass media wait on his every word. They wait, in vain, for the highest-paid coach in the global game to say he signed a four-year contract two years ago and will not break it.

But no. Mourinho has fed the rumors about himself.

Just over a month ago, in a recorded BBC news program, the Portuguese coach spoke of returning to England and staying there for a very long time. “Get me a good club,” he said, repeating the request for added emphasis.

It is not the first time he has stated an intention to coach again in the English Premier League. But the story picked up credibility when the Madrid news media criticized as unacceptable the brutal tactics of Mourinho’s team against Barcelona.

The Madrid sports daily Marca followed that up a week ago with a verbatim account of a training-ground disagreement between the Portuguese coach and the Spanish players, notably defender Sergio Ramos.

Then Siro Lopez, a leading journalist for the rival sports newspaper As, said Mourinho would walk away from his reported 13.5 million-euro-a-year ($17.6 million) post after this season, no matter whether the team wins or loses.

Lopez said he had firsthand information from Mourinho’s closest ally.

If uncontested, rumors become believed as fact. Mourinho makes no move to contradict those, however. The man who called himself “Not one out of the bottle, a special one,” has long written his own headlines.

The story now is that half of the top clubs in England are on the lookout.

Mourinho has said in the past that he regards himself as the successor to Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, if only the 70-year-old Sir Alex were thinking of retirement. Ferguson says that he is not ready to go for at least three more seasons.

The Glazer family, which runs the club from across the Atlantic in the United States, will say nothing in public. But with a winner like Mourinho out there, making himself available for hire, will the owners be afraid of missing the bus that is apparently ready to roll?

But if he is on the market, his record is bound to attract attention. He has won in every league he has coached — in Portugal with FC Porto, in England with Chelsea, in Italy with Inter Milan. A victory in Spain, with Madrid, would complete the record.

If United decides there is no vacancy unless or until the incumbent decides so, where else might Mourinho reappear?

Manchester City has the money, thanks to the sheiks of Abu Dhabi. City’s own coach, Roberto Mancini, was Abu Dhabi’s choice, but the team is out of the Champions League, out of the two English cups and must win the Premier League to justify the unprecedented spending of the owners.

Next, and least likely until a few weeks ago, comes Arsenal. That is Arsene Wenger’s domain. He has recreated the team in his own image, charming when it is on song, flowing as no other team in England can.

However, the natives are restless. Arsenal has won nothing for more than six years.

Wenger and Arsenal are, like Manchester United and Ferguson, an item. The style is the man. But both clubs are owned by Americans and, in sports as in life, winning is the bottom line to many successful Americans.

Then again, there is reason to expect movement at Arsenal’s neighbor, Tottenham Hotspur. The team is riding higher than Arsenal at the moment, but its coach, Harry Redknapp, is in court on charges of tax evasion. And in any case, Redknapp is considered the leading English contender to take over England’s national team this summer.

Style might be the issue. Mourinho is structured to the point of being dictatorial.

Two English clubs might tolerate his methods.

Chelsea — despite the fallout with Roman Abramovich after Mourinho’s previous relationship there ended sourly — has appeared to be exactly what Mourinho set it up to be: The club closest to what he calls his methodology.

And then there is Liverpool, which was Chelsea’s foremost rival when Mourinho was there. Many were the dour contests between Liverpool red and Chelsea blue, and bitter were the experiences of Liverpool squeezing Chelsea out of the Champions League — and Liverpool going on to win the one thing Chelsea has not yet, the Champions League, in 2005.

The crux, I believe, of Mourinho’s problem with Real Madrid is not that he is Portuguese and the players are predominantly Spanish. It is that the team, much too powerful and too gifted for 18 of its opponents in La Liga, dislikes being ordered to change its nature, to play conservatively and to kick fellow Spaniards playing for the Barcelona side.

The International Herald Tribune