Inter Milan unveiled a football coach yesterday but it could have been a Hollywood starlet for all the male swooning in the room. “Eees a Special One,” one portly Italian journalist said as José Mourinho played to the gallery. He used to have that effect on us before the tantrums, all that high maintenance, became rather tiresome.

Give it a year (perhaps not even that long) and he will be setting off fireworks in Italy too, particularly in the office of the club's demanding, hands-on owner, Massimo Moratti. But yesterday was all about the first flush of love and Mourinho was at his most charming. With his top button undone and a big, loose knot in his tie, he had already perfected the smart-but-casual Italian look. Milanese tailors will be queueing round the block.

When he spoke, it quickly became clear that he had learnt not only gramatically flawless Italian but topped it with the Milanese dialect. Refusing to go into detail about any plans to sign Frank Lampard, he said that he was not a “pirla” (loosely translated as a numpty), a slang word normally heard only from old men in Milanese cafés. Cue gasps of admiration and a round of applause. He could not have been trying harder to impress had he arrived on his first day at Chelsea and said that he was off out for a Ruby Murray before it all went Pete Tong.

“I started to learn Italian in March [when Inter first contacted him the day after their Champions League exit against Liverpool] but it is easy,” he said. “I only have problems with the temporal verbs. I am very intelligent.”

Chippy about his status outside Portugal when he arrived at Chelsea in 2004 - he felt his Champions League success with FC Porto was underestimated in England - he had described himself as “a special one”. This time, having taken over a team who have been Italian champions for three years running, he opted for a little more humility. “I've arrived at a special club,” he said. “I've never forgotten that I think I'm a great coach but I don't want to be special. I simply want to be José Mourinho, who is the same person as always.”

Just to confirm that this was indeed the very same Mourinho, he was still whining about the two defeats by Liverpool in Champions League semi-finals, “because of a goal nobody saw and a penalty”. One thing is for certain. In the land of Machiavelli, he should feel right at home.