Reports: Jose Mourinho rejects Manchester United's offer as they ask him to wait till 2017

Jose Mourinho has reportedly turned down the a contract from Manchester United after the English club offered him the position to take over the club come the summer fo 2017. The Portuguese manager has been without a job ever since being sacked by Chelsea in early December of 2015.

Having won the Premier League title last year, Mourinho was unable to stay at the job for even six months given the start the London club had in the Premier League. Having appointed Guus Hiddink as a temporary manager till the end of the season, Chelsea have risen to ninth on the table with three games left to play.

Heavily linked with the managerial job at Manchester United, Mourinho was expected to take over this season with plenty of agencies touting the same but the former Real Madrid man is now second in choice given United's current manager, Louis van Gaal, has overturned a lot of the early-season tension into positive results even guiding the team to the finals of the Emirates FA Cup.

As a club, Manchester United have long insisted on promoting youth from their academy into the first team but given the Portuguese's reluctance to use youngsters and instead always opt for pre-drilled and confident players, Sir Alex Ferguson and a bunch of the United board remained unconvinced that he was right for the job.

With the club now in the finals of the Emirates FA Cup and close to a fourth-placed finish, it could still be a successful season for them given they've incorporated a lot of new players and have suffered a bunch of injuries.

The biggest achievement of Louis van Gaal at Old Trafford is the promotion and incorporation of youngsters like Marcus Rashford, Timothi Fosu-Mensah, Jesse Lingard and more and this has reportedly convinced the board that he needs to be kept on as the manager of the club for at least another season.

Jose Mourinho, meanwhile, has also been a target for Spanish giants and UEFA Champions League finalists Real Madrid. While Zinedine Zidane has done an impressive job at the helm of the club since taking over Rafael Benitez, the club's President Florentino Perez, believes Mourinho could take the club to a whole new level.