Budapest might have ended the story. The Europa League final last May was rumored to be José Mourinho’s last week at Roma.
In 2010, he guided Internazionale to the triple in his second season and departed to join Real Madrid after winning the Champions League.
He hadn’t reached Roma’s heights, but it was a different setting. Mourinho ended a 14-year quest for silverware by winning the Europa Conference League in his first season at the club.
To win the Europa League in season two for a team whose largest continental win was the 1961 Inter-City Fairs Cup would have been remarkable.
Not to be. Roma led through Paulo Dybala in the final last spring but fell to Sevilla in a shootout after an own goal.
Protests about refereeing calls ended with Mourinho calling Anthony Taylor a “fucking disgrace” in the car park after the heated game. A day later, Roma fans threw a chair at the official at the airport.
Mourinho’s gesture to the ground after the game signaled his intention to stay to fans in the stands, garnering attention in Rome.
They adored him. Mourinho has helped Roma sell out almost 40 home games in the past two and a half seasons, including 36 straight.
Fans came to the club’s Trigoria training site for a tearful goodbye after his dismissal on Tuesday morning.
Rome’s football culture, which has traditionally seen itself as an underdog against the wealth and political power of northern clubs, may explain why he is so loved.
Mourinho regularly told Roma fans they were blessed to have him because he had 10 more trophies than their team had in almost a century.
The Europa Conference League title means fulfilling a pledge to share his accomplishment. Additionally, he got the trophy tattooed on his shoulder to show he cared as much as they did.
He enabled hitherto impossible signings. In 2022, Dybala came on a free transfer and Romelu Lukaku from Chelsea last year.
Both were former Serie A MVPs. Ten thousand spectators saw the Argentinian at Rome’s Colosseo Quadrato.
However, 18 months later, the club must decide if those highs were worth it.
Mourinho has often defended his record in Rome by pointing out that the team has spent little on player moves over the past two years while profiting from player sales.
In his first year, Roma spent almost €100m net to strengthen the squad, as well as maintaining the third-highest salary bill in Serie A.
Last season, the club lost €102.8m, half what it had three years earlier but still unsustainable.
Roma’s American owner, Dan Friedkin, traveled his private aircraft to Portugal in 2021 to sign Mourinho, betting on the manager to lead his team to the Champions League and increased money.
Win against Sevilla in May would have taken them there. Roma have failed by conventional domestic performance standards.
The Giallorossi are ninth with one win in their last six Serie A games after finishing sixth in straight seasons under Mourinho.
He has the lowest record of any Roma manager with 50+ games in the three-point win era, averaging 1.61 points per game.
This may not explain why he was fired now. Mourinho has never been far from a conflict with officials—one journalist estimates 29 red cards for Roma bench players in the last two and a half seasons—but the Taylor incident was a turning point.
In an interview last summer, Mourinho accused his bosses of abandoning him, saying the airport event was unrelated to him and that someone from the club should have defended him.
Despite previous public declarations that he was set to sign a new deal, his relationship with the club was deteriorating.
Roma replaced him with former captain Daniele De Rossi.
He is both familiar and unknown: a man who played more than 600 games for the club but has only managed Spal in 17 Serie B games, only three of which were wins.
By hiring a fan-favorite, the club may seek to deflect the wrath that would follow Mourinho’s dismissal.
“Everyone knows what Roma means to me,” De Rossi remarked. As much as anyone, he will know how much fans loved his predecessor.
