"He's one of the best coaches in the world," Fergie has said of Mourinho.
"I knew of him when we played Porto in 2004 but it wasn't until Jose went to Chelsea and called himself the Special One that I began to take notice of him.
"But don't forget he was self anointed! When he called himself that people sat up and I did too - but his achievements were there to be recognised.
"I don't know everything about Jose or what he does on the training ground, but you can't deny his success to win the Uefa Cup with Porto as well as two or three domestic titles in Portugal.
"Then he won the Champions League with them and that takes some doing at a club like Porto.
"After that he won the two titles at Chelsea. It will be good going, too, if he wins the title in his first season at Inter - so he has made his mark alright.
"He came in and said he was the Special One and we were thinking, 'who is this?'. After that his team were thinking they'd better win and they got off to a start like nothing on earth.
"Everyone was chasing their tail for two seasons so we had to do something about it and that's what we did.
"Jose was the instigator of the Chelsea team without question. He gave them a resilience and a winning mentality that has put them onto that higher level and made it hard for us to compete against them."