Jose Mourinho says goodbye to Roma - but it should come as absolutely no surprise

Mourinho arrived in Rome in the summer of 2021 and was welcomed by the fanatic Giallorossi fans as their city’s new emperor. And as a Roman emperor is supposed to, Mourinho went on to conquer Europe, winning the inaugural edition of the UEFA Conference League in 2022 and reaching the 2023 Europa League final, before suffering a defeat on penalties. 

The European success, however, did not turn out to be enough to outweigh the negatives, as Roma cut ties with the Portuguese manager while ninth in Serie A and having been knocked out in the Coppa Italia by archrivals Lazio.

Mourinho’s Roma was characterized by the manager’s classic defensive tactics, but it was mainly the aggressive and agitated atmosphere within the squad and staff that led to a lot of negative headlines and critical approaches from the local media.

Since the start of the 2021/22 Serie A campaign, only Verona (245 yellows, 15 reds) received more bookings than Roma, who were awarded 227 yellow cards and 14 red cards. And that is without all cautions and suspensions given to Mourinho himself: the Portuguese manager received 11 yellow cards and seven red cards in his 96 matches in charge of the club in the Italian top-flight.

Whereas Mourinho’s antics were nothing new and were often smoothed over by good results in the league, this was not the case at Roma. They finished sixth in 2021/22 and 2022/23, and are currently in ninth place. Six teams have collected more points than Mourinho’s side over that period. Not good enough for a club with loftier goals than finishing in the top half of the table.

With 155 points from 96 Serie A games, he has averaged just 1.61 points per game (W44 D23 L29). Among all Roma managers with 50+ matches in the three-points-per-win era (since 1994/95), the Portuguese is bottom of the list.

Mourinho has not been very lucky during his spell at Roma either. He has had to deal with many injured players (Zaniolo, Dybala, Pellegrini, El Shaarawy and Kumbulla, just to name a few), but his players have also not been very sharp in front of goal either.

Looking at Roma’s Expected Goals numbers, it shows that the Giallorossi have underperformed tremendously under Mourinho. In fact, excluding own goals, Roma have recorded the biggest underperformance based on Expected Goals for (-13.2 – 139 goals from 152.2 xG) and the second-biggest underperformance based on Expected Goals against (10.6 – 101 goals conceded from 90.4 xG against). 

But whereas he can point towards being unlucky for the majority of his period at Roma, the last year started to paint a different picture. The Expected Goals difference per game on average favoured Mourinho for the majority of his stint in the Italian capital, but around the turn of the year in 2023, Roma’s underlying numbers became less and less impressive.

After an uptick at the beginning of this season, the last few months have again seen the Giallorossi implode without anything to redeem their manager.

Mourinho will most likely find another club soon, but directors will surely take a look at the development of the Portuguese’s career. He collected the most points per game in charge of FC Porto, and performed incredibly well with Chelsea, Inter and Real Madrid, but has since done much less well – resulting in a huge drop in his points/game average at his most recent employers. 

Mourinho did show his ability to get results in cup competitions at Roma, so any team stuck in limbo in their league but hungry for success will surely have taken notice of his sudden availability, who led all his clubs to either a continental or domestic Cup final since his first big break as Porto manager in 2002. 

As for Roma, with club legend Daniele De Rossi returning to the club, the Giallorossi fans will once again be happy with the appointment of their new (interim) manager.

Let’s hope that the former midfielder will be able to bring Roma some domestic success for the first time since 2007/08, when De Rossi won the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa as a player. For their last Serie A title, we have to go back to 2000/01 – the season in which Daniele De Rossi was first called up to Roma’s first team.