Jose Mourinho believes he would have won more trophies than Pep Guardiola had he stayed at Porto and Inter Milan after winning the Champions League at each club.
Guardiola has guided Manchester City to the Premier League and the Carabao Cup this season - with the FA Cup final awaiting on Saturday - to extend his record to 26 major titles as a manager.
Mourinho, who was sacked by Manchester United in December after overseeing the club's worst start to a league season in 28 years, has won 25 major honours during his managerial career but insists there would have been more had he remained at his former clubs.
"No, no, it reminds me that I'm there, with 25 titles," he told L'Equipe when asked about Guardiola's superior record.
"When I won the Champions League with Porto and Inter Milan, if I had stayed, the season after I would have had the European Super Cup, the Club World Cup and the national Super Cup and perhaps I would have ended up with 31 titles.
"Maybe I'm not so focused on the figures!"
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Mourinho left United with United in sixth, 11 points adrift of the top four, and despite an initial upturn in form under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the Reds finished the season in the same position in the table, five points off fourth place.
And the Portuguese believes a 'nice guy' approach, with which Solskjaer has been associated at Old Trafford in sharp contrast to Mourinho's public persona, is only a short-term fix.
"Generally, the players can feel a certain erosion," he said of his perceived third-season syndrome. "Especially when you ask a lot of them. When I say that the second season was fantastic, I say it because the potential and the objectives were in position.
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"Why? Because I really squeezed, like an orange, to get there. When you have a very professional group of players who are ambitious, hard-working, talented, a structured club, you don't have that erosion.
"When you are almost alone, in that you don't have the support of the club close to you, while certain player go against the coach, who is the nice guy. I don't want to be the nice guy, because the nice guy, after three months, is a puppet and that doesn't end well."
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