Porto's coach Andre Villas-Boas (R) celebrates with a coaching staff after their team's victory over Braga at the Europa League final soccer match at Lansdowne Road in Dublin May 18, 2011. [Photo/Agencies]

Villas-Boas will now enter next season with realistic hopes of equaling Mourinho's feat of following up the team's victory in the 2003 UEFA Cup - the predecessor to the Europa League - with the Champions League title the next year.

"If you think that Porto 2003-2004 was amazing, Porto is back in a final in 2011, and that is something very, very good and important," the coach said.

"The only thing we have to regret today was that the spectacle wasn't up to the Portuguese standards. This doesn't reflect the standard of both teams in the run-up to the final. ... It's a shame that both teams today weren't able to explain themselves in the fullest."

Villas-Boas has always downplayed comparisons to Mourinho, and said he wasn't the key factor in the club's success this season.

"I'm just a gear in a very effective club, with super talents. That's the reality," he said. "Players are decisive in the game of football. It's much more them who give us success rather than us who give them success."

Having gone into coaching as a teenager, Villas-Boas also said he doesn't expect to emulate figures like Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson by remaining on the sidelines for several decades.

"I hope to have a very short career," he said, adding that he expects to stay at the top level of the game for only about another decade.

"It's very stressful," he said. "I have ambition to leave a mark on the game, and I have an ambition to win much more, don't get me wrong. ... I am ambitious, and the people around me are ambitious. But everyone has their own prospects."