Jose Mourinho Has Been A Perfect For Roma, But That Doesn’t Mean He’ll Stay

When he was sacked from Tottenham in late 2020, many believed this was the end of Jose Mourinho at the highest level.

Mourinho seemed a man out of time, a manager increasingly raging against the dying of the light. The game had seemingly passed him by, his tactics fossilised in the mid 2000s.

Even still, when he was announced as the new manager of Roma during Euro 2020 it took many by surprise. The move had come out of nowhere, but it felt to many like the perfect fit. A man with a winning mentality joining a club that was infamous in Italy for lacking one.

Your average Romanista wouldn’t care if the football wasn’t pretty, as long as trophies, or at least an upward trajectory in fortunes, was achieved.

Nearly two years on from his appointment, Mourinho has delivered, and then some.

Mourinho delivered Roma’s first ever-European trophy in his first season, winning the inaugural UEFA
EFA
Europa Conference League. Granted, the opposition wasn’t the strongest until meeting Leicester City in the semi final and Feyenoord in the showpiece event, but it was a trophy to win none the less. Roma had won nothing of note since 2008, and the bridesmaid mentality had been well and truly entrenched within the club.

Mourinho was hired by the Friedkin Group to shatter that mentality and construct a new one. Slowly but surely, he’s doing that. The club are now in their fourth European semi final in five years, second under Mourinho’s guidance, and there is a real possibility of the club making it to a second consecutive European final, with Bayer Leverkusen standing between them and the final in Budapest.

In the league, Mourinho has built on last season’s sixth-place finish, with the Giallorossi currently in fourth (they were third before Juve’s 15 points were handed back). Champions League football is still a very strong possibility, as is another trophy.

Yet what are the prospects of Mourinho staying at Roma beyond the summer? Even if they win the Europa League and qualify for the Champions League, Roma’s club debt means Mourinho isn’t likely to get the kind of spending power in the transfer market he generally demands.

The Friedkin Group are attempting to run Roma on more economical lines in order to reduce the club debt. The club faced FFP sanctions from UEFA this season, with the governing body withholding €5m ($5.5m) of their prize money from their run in this season’s Europa League.

Roma’s debt stands at around €271m ($300m), and even with lucrative Champions League football, that figure will remain relatively high next season. Last summer, Paulo Dybala and Nemanja Matic arrived on free deals, as did Gini Wijnaldum on a season-long loan from Paris Saint-Germain.

Of course, Dybala’s wages are high, but Roma spent little on transfer fees. It’s expected that a similar approach may be undertaken this coming summer, and this could be a thorny issue between Mourinho and the club.

Mourinho knows, as do most observers of Serie A, that the current Roma side has a ceiling. Investments are needed if the club are to perform to a decent standard in the Champions League next season and perhaps even a crack at the league title next season. This summer is peculiar in a sense that there will be a lot of high quality players available on free transfers, but Roma still need to invest money if they are to really challenge.

If Mourinho doesn’t get a transfer budget, he could walk away. His comments recently have been somewhat cryptic in relates to staying until the end of his contract in 2024, stating that ‘contracts in football don’t mean anything’.

The likely scenario is that if he isn’t given a decent budget, he walks away, potentially with another European trophy under his arm, his reputation once again thriving.

And where Roma go from there remains to be seen.