José Mourinho tries to reset Roma narrative but chapter is nearing end

Photograph: Spada/LaPresse/Shutterstock

“This is us, this is Roma,” said José Mourinho before his team’s game at Milan on Sunday. “You have the most incredible supporters I have ever seen in my life. And then you have a manager who, when people hear his name, they think it’s José Harry Mourinho Potter, not José Félix. The level of demand and expectation shoots up.”

He was attempting to reset the narrative after a midweek Coppa Italia defeat by Lazio, perhaps his lowest moment since taking over the club in summer 2021. Roma’s league form had collapsed, with just one win in their previous five matches seeing them fall behind in the race for Champions League places, and now they had lost their shortest path to winning a trophy. None of that mattered as much as having dropped another derby.

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Mourinho has lost four out of six derbies since arriving in Rome, with only a single victory. The significance was best summed up by the remarks of his opposite number. “I could not have cared less about qualifying for the next round of the Coppa Italia,” said Maurizio Sarri – a man who has consistently disparaged that competition. “But you need to win the derby for your people.”

These are games that can change the trajectory of a manager’s stay in the capital. La Gazzetta dello Sport reported afterward that #mourinhoout was trending on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the first time in three years.

The Portuguese has been overwhelmingly popular with the Roma fanbase, his presence the crucial factor in a run of more than 40 consecutive sell-out crowds at the Stadio Olimpico. Even now, it would be wrong to infer that the majority have turned against him. Calls for his sacking have been met with an equally furious counter-campaign.

There are plenty who share Mourinho’s belief that unreasonable expectations are being placed upon him. Roma are operating within tight financial constraints as they work to fulfil their financial fair play obligations with Uefa. They have spent less than €10m on transfer fees this season while recouping more than €70m.

That too, though, is an incomplete picture. Roma had a net spend of more than €100m during Mourinho’s first summer at the club. Not all that money was spent wisely. Tammy Abraham was brilliant, racking up 27 goals in his first season at the club, before being derailed by a cruciate knee ligament injury. Eldor Shomurodov, who started only six league games for the Giallorossi, was not.

While Roma’s spending on transfer fees has since been cut to the bone, their wage bill remains the third-highest in Serie A. Before Victor Osimhen’s contract renewal at Napoli this month, Romelu Lukaku was the joint-best paid player in the league. Roma’s outgoing general manager, Tiago Pinto, has done some shrewd business, and landing Paulo Dybala on a free transfer in 2022 was a coup. But claims to poverty will ring hollow to their rivals.

Sunday’s opponents, Milan, were aggressive in the summer transfer window, adding the likes of Christian Pulisic, Tijjani Reijnders and Ruben Loftus-Cheek as part of their own €120m splurge, even if they did offset by selling Sandro Tonali to Newcastle. Yet they spend about 15% less than Roma on player salaries. And Mourinho earns almost twice as much as their manager, Stefano Pioli.

You would not have known it at San Siro. Mourinho sprung a surprise by sending his team out to attack from the first whistle, adapting his 3-5-2 to have Leandro Paredes play as a No10 behind Lukaku and Stephan El Shaarawy – the latter also an unexpected choice ahead of Andrea Belotti. The remaining two midfielders, Edoardo Bove and Bryan Cristante, were shuttling from box-to-box: a marked shift from the more rigid lines held in recent matches.

Yet Milan were not ruffled. They took the lead in the 11th minute, Yacine Adli shifting the ball from right boot to left as he glided past Rasmus Kristensen and finished into the bottom corner.

Genoa 0-0 Torino, Napoli 2-1 Salernitana, Verona 2-1 Empoli, Monza 1-5 Internazionale, Lazio 1-0 Lecce, Cagliari 2-1 Bologna, Fiorentina 2-2 Udinese, Milan 3-1 Roma

Roma’s right wing-back, Zeki Celik, did draw one good save from Mike Maignan before the break. But Olivier Giroud headed in a second for Milan early in the second half. The outcome looked set until a needless foul from Davide Calabria gave Paredes the opportunity to pull a goal back from the penalty spot. But a nervy end to the game was avoided when Théo Hernández combined with Giroud down the left and crashed the ball in off the bar to seal a 3-1 Rossoneri win.

That result extended an impressive personal record for Pioli, who has faced Mourinho six times and never lost. No other manager can boast more than three games without a defeat against the Portuguese.

It was not so long ago that Pioli’s own position appeared to be under threat. The man who led Milan to the Serie A title in 2022 has been criticised for abdicating the crown meekly last season and falling behind Inter and Juventus in this campaign. An early Champions League exit – even in a formidable group – did not help his cause.

But his team have taken four wins and a draw from their last five league games. They continue to lag nine points behind Inter, who have set an extraordinary pace, but have an identical buffer now to Lazio in fifth. Even that spot might be good enough to qualify for the Champions League, depending on how Italian clubs fare in the rest of this season’s European competitions.

Roma, on the other hand, have slid to ninth. A long injury list has played its part – though Milan have also had it tough in that regard – but even if we accept Mourinho’s claims to lesser resources than the competition, his team have eight points fewer than they did at the corresponding point last term.

However his time in the capital ends, Mourinho will leave a lasting legacy. By leading Roma to victory in the inaugural Europa Conference League, he delivered them a first piece of silverware in 14 years – and their first continental trophy since the 1961 Fairs Cup. His team were a penalty shootout away from lifting the Europa League last season as well.

Yet Mourinho has failed so far to deliver the one thing that mattered most to Roma’s American ownership group: a return to the Champions League, and the revenue streams that come with it. In Serie A, he has recorded consecutive sixth-place finishes – hardly an improvement on his predecessor Paulo Fonseca, who earned less than half as much while finishing fifth and then seventh.

There is the feeling of a chapter ending. Pinto will leave Roma in February, and Mourinho’s contract is up in the summer. He went public with his desire to extend at the end of last year, but there has been no movement from the club to begin negotiations. Some Italian media outlets reported on Monday that a change could be made sooner if results continue to spiral.

Mourinho watched this latest defeat from the stands at San Siro, serving a suspension after he was sent off against Atalanta earlier this month. By one journalist’s count there have now been 29 red cards shown to members of the Roma bench since he arrived. More than a magic wand, it is tempting to wonder if Roma might benefit simply from a period of calm.

Pos

Team

Pts

Inter Milan

Juventus

AC Milan

Fiorentina

Lazio

Bologna

Napoli

Atalanta

Roma