Jose Mourinho is free to return to Chelsea after Real Madrid president Florentino Perez last night waived the £12million compensation clause in his contract.

Perez announced that Mourinho’s troubled and chaotic three-year stint at the Bernabeu will end next month after holding talks with the Portuguese coach over the weekend.

Mourinho had four years left on his contract. He will take charge of Sunday’s clash at Real Sociedad and then bow out at home against Osasuna on June 1.

Perez, who hopes to appoint Paris Saint-Germain’s title-winning coach Carlo Ancelotti, said: ‘The club and manager agree the timing is right to bring our relationship to an end. We would like to thank Jose for all his hard work. The team have improved in his three years and we wish him all the best.’

The self-styled Special One will officially leave his position at the Bernabeu on June 3 and Chelsea are hoping to unveil him at a Stamford Bridge press conference the following week.

The parting was billed, diplomatically, as ‘mutual consent’, but anyone with more than a passing interest in Mourinho’s career in Spain will know he has exhausted the patience of this famous club — particularly with his failure to win the Champions League.

Perez added: ‘We have made a big jump in terms of competitiveness. Now we are back where we belong. Before we were being knocked out of the Champions League at the last-16 stage and now we are always group seeds.

‘We played some spectacular football last season. In the world of mere mortals reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League and the final of the Copa del Rey would be enough but for us it is not enough.

‘Overall, the balance is positive. It has just not been sufficiently good; neither for us nor for Mourinho. But it has not been a bad season.

‘Mourinho is the longest-serving coach in the first division. It is not easy to last three seasons — and even more so at this club.

‘If we had won a European Cup then we would not be talking about this. In England a match lasts the two hours before a game, the two hours of the game, and then the two hours afterwards. Here it is seven days a week and the pressure tells. We would have liked him to continue but the pressure was just not sustainable and went beyond the limits of normality, with insults unbecoming civilised people.’

Perez added that it was ‘unacceptable’ for Real Madrid supporters to have abused Mourinho’s wife as she sat in the back of his car when he drove into their training ground two weeks ago.

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