Jose Mourinho hoping Tammy Abraham can fire Roma to Europa Conference League glory

A manager who criss-crosses Europe for two decades, coaching clubs in every different branch of Uefa competition, can expect, from time to time, to end up at venues outside the limelight.

Twelve months ago, Jose Mourinho, twice a winner of the Champions League, was overseeing Tottenham Hotspur’s exit from the Europa League at Dinamo Zagreb. On Thursday, he attempts to guide current club Roma to the inaugural final of the Europa Conference League as they travel to Dutch side Vitesse Arnhem in the first leg of the last-16 round.

Vitesse are infrequent visitors to European competitions. But Mourinho knows them reasonably well because of the long, developed relationship Vitesse have developed with Chelsea. Since 2010, Vitesse have been a favoured club of Chelsea to loan young players to, allowing the footballers to gain experience and the Dutch club access to up-and-coming talent.

The relationship was at its most active when Mourinho last managed Chelsea, from 2013 to 2015. In the pre-season of 2014, he took his Chelsea players to Arnhem for a training camp. To remember that expedition is to be reminded of how pre-seasons tended to promote the prospects and advertise the talents of young Chelsea players. Then the season itself would typically frustrate them.

In that summer of 2014, when Mourinho’s English champions-to-be played Vitesse in a friendly while in Arnhem, Chelsea had just won the FA Youth Cup, English football’s most illustrious under-age club trophy. Mourinho was praising the stars of that campaign, such as striker Dominic Solanke, now of Bournemouth. That summer, Chelsea would also sell a 21-year-old Romelu Lukaku, who had joined them aged 18. They ended up paying almost €100 million to bring Lukaku back last