JOSE MOURINHO’S frown eased imperceptibly, and his face lightened, as he contemplated the question. 

The wrinkles on his tanned skin became less taut, and his brown eyes glinted in the glare of the TV cameras.

You knew he was teeing up another line, to add to his litany of box office quotes. But you were helplessly drawn into the theatre, his theatre, in what was his post-match press conference. 

Exuding confidence and a supreme mastery of the scene he surveyed — which was English and Italian journalists and broadcasters hanging onto his every word, including this correspondent — Mourinho readied himself with the hint of a smile, mixed with the comic device of mock indignation.

The Special One — or should it be the Charismatic One — revelling in his return to England in the aftermath of Roma’s 1-1 draw at Leicester last week, announced that his opposite number Brendan Rodgers, his former protege at Chelsea, “got me the best Portuguese bottle of wine.”

He added with a flourish: “He’s crying because it’s really expensive — but he wanted to give me my favourite bottle of Portuguese wine. It is really hard to find. I don’t know how he found it.” He paused for effect, “but I know how he paid for it.”

Mourinho’s light-hearted observations brought laughs, guffaws and smiles all-round from hard-bitten hacks, who knew the former Chelsea, Real Madrid and Manchester United boss had just given them another headline, to go with plenty of others to choose from during his mesmerising post-match presser. 

(Maybe there is simply something about wine that gets managers going. Stevenage’s new boss, Steve Evans recently told me a gloriously compelling story about the day he bought a ridiculously expensive bottle of wine for Sir Alex Ferguson, before an FA Cup tie against a team he was managing.)

Yet, enigmatic smile dropping as quickly as it arrived, Mourinho also cautioned that the Foxes would face an intimidatory atmosphere before and during the second leg of the Europa Conference League semi-final in Rome’s famed Olympic Stadium.

It was to prove so, with Tammy Abraham’s Thursday night winner in a frenetic cauldron of passionate Roman support, sealing a 1-0 victory, to ensure I Giallorossi made it through to the Albanian capital Tirana, 2-1 on aggregate, where they will now face Feyenoord in the final.

My report duly done, I drove back from Filbert Way after the first leg last week. Normally when I process a match while heading home, whether it be a quick Tube journey, cross-country train ride or a six-hour drive, I replay in my head goals, key incidents, crucial moments or quirky matters arising from the previous 90 minutes.

But motoring back down the M1 (will there ever be a time when there won’t be night closures on the country’s first motorway?) all I could think about was Mourinho.

Why? 

It dawned on me that my fascination was because of his charisma.

Yet surely it had to be more than the fact that myself, and so many others, were simply captivated by what he said. 

After all, this is a man who spectacularly fell out with legendary former Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger, after crude and crass comments before a game. (Disclaimer, as an Arsenal supporter I don’t care for Mourinho. But as a journalist I am utterly captivated by him.)

It got me thinking: What is charisma? What defines it?

What makes me sit up and hang on the every word of some people, and not others?

I must have been to hundreds, if not thousands of press conferences over the years, some big, some small, but the principle is the same. Boss comes in to face the media. Says words. Leaves. 

So, why, do people such as Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have “charisma” — yet, people like Roy Hodgson, or Eddie Howe don’t?

It can’t be purely to do with success. Yes, I would class Claudio Ranieri as having it. But he had it long before he guided Leicester to the Premier League title, including relative “failure” at Chelsea in 2004. 

And if it was just to do with being a nice guy, then Howe and Hodgson would also have it. Incidentally, my favourite memory of gentleman Hodgson was of him effortlessly and elegantly switching from English to Italian after departing a press conference at Selhurst Park, when he was approached by a father and son outside who politely asked him to sign their Inter Milan shirt.

Which also means, despite being a true gentleman, Unai Emery, singularly lacks charisma too. And he’s won four Europa Leagues and guided unfashionable Villarreal to the last four of the Champions League this week.

It’s certainly nothing to do with language per se. Antonio Conte has charisma. And his English language skills are not always as evident as his natural intelligence. (And yes, I can see the irony of me passing comment on the second or third languages of continental bosses, without being able to get by in anything other than a spot of pigeon French and a few words of Arabic myself.)

To underline the point above, after studying Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel during recent post-match pressers while covering games at Stamford Bridge, I would say the German lacks charisma. Yet his English is faultless. And he won the Champions League last season. 

Is charisma to do with your character? In that case, surely only the “good guys” would have it, while pantomime villains such as Mourinho would be cast as Princes of Darkness. 

In my wanderings this season, I would definitely say Brentford’s Thomas Frank has charisma, but Everton’s Frank Lampard doesn’t. Nor does Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta. I have to stress it doesn’t make any of the above better or worse managers.

Arsene Wenger did of course. Oh, for the days of being at one of his Friday pressers at the club’s training ground at London Colney, where this urbane, sophisticated man would hold forth on a myriad of sporting and non-sporting topics, invariably with the hint of a smile or a slightly raised eyebrow to indicate irony. 

We can’t simply put that down to a mysterious thing called the “X-factor.” That’s far too trite and far too lazy. I don’t agree with it — because what is the “X-factor” anyway? If you can’t define it, how can you analyse it?

There used to be an advert in the 1980s about Ready Brek. A breakfast of rolled oats that you added hot milk or water to.

The theory was that once you had your daily bowl, it would set you up for the day.

The advertising would underline that fact by revealing the people who had eaten their Ready Brek that morning had a bright orange glow running all along the outline of their body, from head to toe. 

That’s how I describe someone who is charismatic to friends. It’s as if Wenger, Guardiola and Klopp, Conte and Frank, and of course Mourinho, all have that bright glow around them that draws you towards them, whether you can help yourself or not. 

Yes, charisma has to be about charm, magnetism, confidence and, yes, it’s about possessing a compelling nature, but — and here’s the crux of it for me — I believe charisma is also about empathy. 

Mourinho et al’s trick, on top of all the other ingredients, is making you, the interviewer, or the broadcaster, the audience watching at home, or fans in the stadium, the autograph-hunter and the selfie-taker, feel like you are being addressed personally. That you are included in their world. That they care about you, or understand you — even for a single moment. When he mesmerisingly spoke about Rodgers’ gift, it was as if he were telling me the story, and me alone. 

It was instructive to watch Mourinho break the “fourth wall” as it were, after his media duties ended last week at Leicester. He strode into the media bearpit and hugged a well-known English television broadcaster. Amid the theatre there was genuine fondness in the act. 

Just as there was an authenticity by Wenger, when, after his final press conference at Ashburton Grove, after his last home game, where scribes had clubbed together to buy him an expensive bottle of wine (it’s that topic of wine again), he spoke from the heart and with empathy, saying that he understood we all had a difficult job to do and that he wished us well.

It was an extraordinarily kind thing to say given the circumstances, and a moment that I was lucky enough to be present at — and one which I’ll never forget. 

So perhaps charisma can also be defined as inspiring devotion in others through a compelling empathy. 

I’d like to think so.