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The image of Mourinho on a Vespa with a Roma scarf has become a cult in Rome.
Here it adorns a fan poster for a game
Photo:
Giuseppe Fama / imago images / Pacific Press Agency
Italy started its successful European Championship mission in Rome in June, but at the same time another, most locals would say, more important football issue was being negotiated in the capital. AS Roma had hired the colorful Portuguese José Mourinho, aka: »Lo Speziale«, as their new coach and thus electrified the city. Local rival Lazio couldn't let that go and presented the odd self-made man, chain smoker and tracksuit fetishist Maurizio Sarri as a counter-weapon.
An artistic addition on a wall in the Testaccio district - where the first Roma stadium once stood - illustrated the personnel.
Street artist Harry Greb immortalized a Mourinho on a Vespa with a Roma scarf around his neck.
Now Lazio fans have enriched the portrait with a Sarri who blows his cigarette smoke in the face of the chugging Mourinho.
Two coaches, made for what is probably the craziest soccer metropolis on the continent.
Who will win the western-style duel?
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Mourinho took over AS Roma in the summer and should build something up in the club
Photo:
ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP
This Sunday (6 p.m. / Stream: DAZN) the derby rises, for the first time since January 2020 with spectators. Heavy current is guaranteed even at normal times, on average there is more than one dismissal per season. Where both clubs usually play up front, but rarely for the championship - the Roma last won the Scudetto in 2001, Lazio in 2000 - and the disappointed, but all the more passionate love is an integral part of the identity: the local fight is all the more important. He regulates the hierarchy in the city, which is, after all, an eternal one.
Mourinho is ahead of the game until kick-off. Not only in the table, where Roma are in fourth place with twelve points from five games and Lazio with eighth in seventh place. But also with the hype. At least since he celebrated the winning goal against Sassuolo in stoppage time a few weeks ago with an uninhibited jubilee run to the curve and then flirted in front of the press: "I lied to everyone." Game of his coaching career went on. After the late luck, he confessed: "It wasn't a normal evening, I was afraid of losing ... I won't forget that for my whole life."
The dramatism, the shrewdness: Italy is witnessing the return of a prodigal son. In no other league was the controversial Portuguese as revered as during his years at Inter Milan (2008 to 2010). Italy loves the theater, and it also likes to look after one or the other human weakness when someone has good entertainment, great emotions and a strong character to offer.
Mourinho was also outrageously successful - the last coach to give Italy a Champions League victory in the 2010 final against Bayern.
A supposedly obsolete and little star-laden Inter to the longed-for first handle pot since 1965 and thus to have completed the presidential dynasty of the Morattis: in addition to the similarly unexpected triumph with FC Porto, the masterpiece of his career.
Mourinho knew that it couldn't get any better and moved on to Madrid, weeping heartbreakingly from bad boy Marco Materazzi during a last hug in the parking garage and from all the Interisti with him.
Disenchanted cabin trainer
Neither the Milanese nor Mourinho should recover from the breakup. In Madrid he bit into the fight against a style-defining FC Barcelona. In the square, in the media, in the back rooms. Sometimes he seemed to forget that he had a pretty good team himself. He was able to wrest a championship from the Catalans and contribute to the closing of their miracle coach Pep Guardiola, but when he left in 2013, the previously so overpowering myth of the cabin trainer in particular had been disenchanted; rather, Mourinho, with his destructive nature, had lost large parts of the team.
The pattern was repeated from then on during his second stage in England.
Whether on his return to Chelsea, in Manchester or Tottenham: A bitter Mourinho was fired by the third year at the latest, indifferent to the team's dull football, quarreling with their own players, fatalistic to the press.
His rigid game philosophy, never as eye-catching as his person even in good times, seemed increasingly out of date, and he was occasionally demonstrated by the new generation of coaches.
Would he ever get another decent job?
In this respect, the return to his paradise is possibly his last chance in top club football.
Italy.
Or the increase: Rome.
The “Gazzetta dello Sport” photographed him with an “Ave Mou” on the cover of the new Caesar.
Roma went through a tough period during his time at Inter, when they were his worst rivals.
Nevertheless, he was received like a messiah by the red and yellow fan base.
Francesco Totti is also enthusiastic: "He is leading the way, he acts like a lightning rod, and that is a skill that can be decisive in a city like Rome," says the greatest club legend, and she should know.
Totti's successor, the current captain Lorenzo Pellegrini - banned for the derby after a disputed dismissal on Thursday in the 1-0 win against Udinese - joins the chorus: “I've
never
had such an atmosphere in Trigoria (
club
grounds
, editor's note
) experienced."
The Portuguese should build something
Contrary to previous custom, Mourinho was less committed to guaranteeing the title by AS owner Dan Friedkin, an entrepreneur and film producer. But to slowly build something up. The Roma finished last season in seventh place, with major problems in defense and mostly helpless against other top teams. In the summer, long-time goalgetter Edin Dzeko went to Inter, for which Mourinho bought the Englishman Tammy Abraham from Chelsea for 40 million at Mourinho's request. Probably the best player, the outstanding full-back Leonardo Spinazzola at the European Championships, will be out for months with a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Mourinho therefore prefers to act as a warning when he is not running around the corner or eating pizza close to the people.
"We mustn't turn from enthusiasm into depression," he said after the only loss of the season in Verona.
"It takes balance to build something." Or, after the victory against Udine: "The Tifosi have to have their emotions and expectations under control."
Which, of course, completely contradicts the tradition of how the Romans live football.
Seen in this light, Mourinho is planning nothing more than a cultural revolution in the Eternal City.