Every time you hear Jose Mourinho is joining a new club, you invariably wonder how long he can keep the job; how long before he gets sacked.
The strangest part is before he gets the axe, more often than not he manages to win something, a lesser or an important trophy. With AS Roma in Italy, he oversaw two notable performances. He led the team to the Europa Conference League trophy in 2022 and last year they ended as runners-up in the Europa League.
But clearly, the club owners were not happy and sacked him on Tuesday which is understandable. When you bring in a manager of Mourinho’s calibre and quality, you aim for bigger things like a Serie A title or a Champions League title. If not that, at least finish inside the top four in Serie A and qualify for the Champions League but since Mourinho joined the club ahead of the 2021-22 season, twice Roma have finished sixth in Serie A. In the ongoing season, they are presently ninth. They have been struggling. The last few days… things came to a head. First, they lost to Lazio in the Coppa Italia on Wednesday. Then came a defeat against AC Milan on Sunday.
But Mourinho often doesn’t get his marching orders based on his performance. Often to keep up his image of a wisecracker (or maybe he is a natural), he says things that rub the authorities up the wrong way. For example after the defeat against city rivals Lazio he said: “The Roma fans are the most incredible I have seen. Their coach is Jose ‘Harry Potter’ Mourinho and he raises expectations.”
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In the lead-up to the match, Roma had picked up just five points from five matches in Serie A. The Coppa Italia exit made it worse. A manager whose team is going through a turbulent time will do well to keep his mouth shut.
Just keep your head down and strive to get better. But Mourinho being Mourinho is going to come up with some Harry Potter analogy and upset some important people along the way. Sunday’s 3-1 defeat against Milan appears to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s difficult to stick a wisecracker for too long, especially when the wisecracker is not delivering.
This was the sixth time Mourinho was sacked by a club. Chelsea, who achieved great heights with Mourinho, sacked him twice. First in 2007 after winning two Premier League titles and then in 2015 after winning another. Real Madrid, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have done it once each. During his stay at Real which ended in 2013, he won one La Liga title. During his United stint that ended in 2018, he won the League Cup as well as the Europa League. Only at Spurs he failed to win a trophy but he led the club to the League Cup final in 2021. Actually, he was sacked a few days before the final which Spurs went on to lose. Mourinho later went on to say, in his cheeky way, that was half a trophy for him.
Mourinho is a highly motivated, disciplined man. The problem is he wants to be in full charge of a situation and also has a tendency to shoot from the hip which can be hard to put up with especially in bad times for a club. He has a personality that is appealing in good times but very unnerving when things are not going according to plan.
He had a horrible start to the ongoing season having picked up just five points from their first six matches. At the time he boasted he had rejected the craziest offer to leave the club in the summer. Of course, it was a defensive act. His attempt to become bigger than the game, bigger than clubs, has often been his undoing, but he, even at 60 years of age, refuses to learn.