For supporters of Chelsea, Manchester United or Tottenham, Jose Mourinho’s reaction to a costly defeat for his current side might have sounded familiar.
According to an Italian newspaper, Mourinho accused his AS Roma players of “a lack of balls and personality” in the dressing room following last week’s 2-0 loss to his former club, Inter Milan, and advised them to play in the third tier if they are “afraid” of big matches.
Mourinho did not deny the report after the weekend’s 2-2 draw against Sassuolo but claimed his squad had urged him not to change, and took a swipe at the media for asking him about the dressing-room mood.
For most of the winter, Mourinho’s reign at Roma has been steadily unspooling in a well-worn pattern and his rhetoric has become familiar.
He has accused his players of not being good enough and having a weak mentality. He has also played down expectations, saying, for example, that Sassuolo have a stronger squad.
Roma started the season well, with seven wins from Mourinho’s first eight matches, but results and performances have steadily gone south. Their football has been turgid and there are questions about Mourinho’s man-management and tactics.
The low point remains the 6-1 humiliation at the hands of Norwegian side Bodo-Glimt in the Europa Conference League, while other matches have played out in eerily familiar fashion. For Tottenham’s collapse from 3-0 up to draw 3-3 with West Ham last season, see Roma’s 4-3 home defeat by Juventus on January 9, when they conceded three late goals.
Meanwhile, some Roma fans — including the hosts of La Magicast, an English language Roma podcast — have reported a coarsening of the discourse as the fanbase descends into an online culture war.
Mourinho apparently maintains a solid groundswell of support in Rome and there have been good moments, while the Conference League offers a clear route to silverware.
But most seasoned Mourinho watchers should be able to predict how this is likely to end.
Even so, reporting on Spurs this season has been to occasionally wonder if some of Mourinho’s decisions in north London are worthy of reappraisal.
When Antonio Conte succeeded the Portuguese at Chelsea, he quickly transformed the squad from a rabble into champions.
But Conte has tended to agree with Mourinho’s assessment of the overall standard of the Tottenham squad and several individuals. It is difficult to know, however, the extent to which Conte is still picking up the pieces from Mourinho’s 17 months at Spurs, and there is no doubt the Italian has had to work to raise fitness levels and fragile confidence.
Mourinho may have been right in his assessment of certain players, but he was still the wrong appointment at the wrong time for Spurs, and his tenure set the club back.
One of Mourinho’s persistent problems at Spurs was his side’s tendency to repeatedly throw away leads in the same frustrating fashion, leading to suggestions they were not playing to the squad’s strengths.
Spurs would go in front but then quickly drop deep in an apparent attempt to see out the win, only for their defence to inevitably crack under sustained pressure. Mourinho always insisted he was not instructing his side to passively defend leads and this was supported by the players at the time, even if there was little indication from the touchline that the Portuguese was unhappy with their approach.
In September, I interviewed Toby Alderweireld, who had left Spurs for Qatar and gave an honest and insightful assessment of his six years at the club.
While Alderweireld was determined to be respectful to all his former colleagues, he seemed stumped when asked to explain Spurs’ habit of losing leads, and reiterated that Mourinho had not instructed the team to defend.
One conclusion is that, while Mourinho had not expressly told his players to be passive or defensive, he created an atmosphere in which they assumed that was what he wanted.
Perhaps his reputation for grinding out narrow wins, forged at Chelsea and Inter, preceded him, leaving his players terrified of conceding once they had gone in front.
There might, therefore, be something in Mourinho’s frequent assertions that his sides play with fear, although it is not the opponent they are afraid of, but disappointing him.
