Louis van Gaal was impressed with Jose Mourinho from the first day they met but he never expected him to go on to become such a top coach.
Van Gaal's Bayern Munich come up against Mourinho's Inter on Saturday night as the two coaches face each other for the first time.
But their story began back in 1997, when Van Gaal took over as coach of Barcelona and Mourinho made his mark from the very beginning.
Van Gaal said: "I had an initial meeting with (then Barca president Josep Lluis) Nunez and (coach) Bobby Robson. Mourinho was present. I thought they were going to offer me the job of head of the youth team, but they offered me the coach's job.
"Mourinho was angry, really angry. Furious. He was already the 'Special One'. That's partly why I hired him - it's my philosophy.
"But I didn't think he would go on to become such an important coach as he is today."
Van Gaal rewarded Mourinho's decision to stay at Barca by giving his assistant extra responsibilities and even allowing him to taking over the coaching role in some less important cup matches.
"He could have left (when Robson was relieved of his coaching duties) but he wanted to stay with me. He was a very good co-trainer and produced some fantastic reports," Van Gaal revealed.
"In fact, I did something I had never done before - I let him coach (matches)."
Both coaches have the chance of leading their team to an historic treble of league, cup and Champions League, while on a personal note, one of them will join an elite list of managers who have led two separates sides to European Cup glory.
Only two men have managed that - Ernst Happel (Feyenoord and Hamburg) and Ottmar Hitzfeld (Borussia Dortmund and Bayern).
Either Van Gaal or Mourinho will become the third tonight, but the latter believes both will go on to achieve the feat, whatever happens at the Santiago Bernabeu this evening.
"I think we will both go on to do it, whoever wins this game," he said.
Mourinho counts Van Gaal as a key figure in his development as a coach.
"He is a great coach and I learned a lot from him, my time with him definitely marked me.
"For three years we worked together and his house was 50 metres from my house, so we almost worked 24 hours a day together. It was a very special relationship for me," he explained.
"I worked like a beast, but it was a pleasure and I learnt from him; one of the things I learnt was that to be successful you have to work very hard.
"I only have good things to say about those times and I won't forget it, or that person, who was marvellous with me."
Van Gaal, meanwhile, had claimed Mourinho, unlike himself, was a defensive coach, but the Portuguese dismissed that opinion.
"He must have only seen the Barcelona-Inter game. He can't have seen the Inter-Barcelona or Inter-CSKA games, which is a contradiction because we used to watch lots of matches together," he said.
But there was no chance of a war of words, given the great mutual respect between the two men.
They spoke yesterday afternoon, Mourinho revealed, and will remain friends after the game.
"What I told him by text when we qualified for the final was 'a big hug before the final, a big hug after the final'.
"The big hug before the game happened yesterday. The other one will happen tonight."
Another thing Mourinho will do tonight, if victorious, is don a gold crown gifted to him during the press conference by a Russian journalist.
"If we win, I'll put it on," said the Inter coach, who in turn presented the surprised writer with his team tracksuit top.
