‘Better coach, same DNA’: Mourinho matures as Roma target more glory

N ot long ago, an Italian radio show opened the phones for listeners and a final-year biology student called Marta rang in with a problem. On Wednesday Marta graduates from university in Rome but, she explained, her dad won’t be there with her: he will be in Budapest instead. When it mattered, Roma came first. The story was soon everywhere, the subject of debate, and while not everyone agrees – the club’s former captain Daniele De Rossi said he was staying behind to be with his daughter – plenty were on her father’s side.

This is only the fourth Uefa final Roma have reached, after all. Half of those have now been under José Mourinho, who has won all five of those he has been at, including last year’s Conference League for Roma. That was their first trophy since 2008. If Marta is not happy with Mourinho, everyone else is delighted. Win the Europa League and some think it would be the greatest achievement of his career, bigger even than what he did at Porto or Internazionale.

When he was asked recently about the prospect of Roma reaching the Champions League with an extremely limited budget – something that could be secured in Hungary – Mourinho said that doing so would not just be history or a miracle; it would be Jesus Christ himself turning up in Rome and taking a stroll around the Vatican. Not that he was thinking about that, he insisted, as he prepared his team at their Trigoria training ground: he just wanted to play, to make the fans happy.

Oh, he has. Joy may not always be the word most associated with Mourinho, the manager whose team edged through the semi-final second leg against Bayer Leverkusen with a single shot, less than 30% possession and the ball out of play almost as much as it was in, and as he