Roma and the magic of 'Jose Culture'
Short Read - How Jose got his groove back in the Italian capital.
This is the start of some shorter opinion-heavy reads I’m going to include alongside the weekly longer researched ones. There will be a free one of these every month, alongside the monthly long read. Hope you enjoy it!
Italian football is back (well at least on the surface).
Serie A teams will feature in all three European finals this season, as Inter Milan, Roma and Fiorentina have made it all the way in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League respectively.
At some point, I will talk about Vincenzo Italiano’s Fiorentina side (we talked about him briefly on The Serie A-sly Good Podcast). Still, I think we need to talk about Jose Mourinho’s resurgence at Roma.
If you follow me on Twitter, you might know that as well as football, I’m a big fan of basketball, specifically the Miami Heat.
The franchise has something called ‘Heat Culture’, which many people have tried to define over the past few months after they inexplicably clawed their way from the 8th seed all the way to the NBA finals, but I think Charles Barkley explained it the best:
“We get so enamoured with talent, guys who can really, really run, really really jump who can’t play dead. That’s what we show on television. If you play hard and play smart and take care of the ball, you have the Miami Heat. They’re very well-coached. They have a system.
“The Spurs used to be like that. We’re going to be smart, not going to take bad shots. You’re going to get with the program or you’re not going to be here. That’s why the Miami Heat is successful.”
They thrive when they are backed into a corner; seeing the uphill climb in front of them not as a challenge but as a bonding experience. There are no heroes or individual plaudits, just the win that they earn as a team.
Now even if you’re not a fan of basketball, you could be reading that description and thinking ‘Why does that sound familiar?’. Well because it’s very similar to the philosophy that Jose Mourinho employs as a manager.
When discussing Mourinho, a lot of journalists, players and pundits alike discuss the ‘buy-in’; the Portuguese manager needs every single player to be fully in line with his way of thinking.
It’s both his best and worst quality; when it works you get first-season Mourinho, when it doesn’t you get third-season.
He’s inflexible to a fault and many expected this was leading to his eventual downfall, but it seems at Roma he has found his footing once again.
Now you have to take ‘found his footing once again’ with a pinch of salt as this isn’t reflected in the league; Roma are yet to break into the top four under the Special One, but on the other hand, reaching back to back European finals is nothing to be sniffed at.
But why do Mourinho and Roma work so well?
Well, firstly they back him. Mourinho likes to wax lyrical about how his squad isn’t up to scratch (we’ll get to why that is in a second) but they have spent the fourth most in the league under him.
But secondly, they are a team of underdogs, both individually and as a unit.
Mourinho’s best teams have always been the guys who are out to prove people wrong, maybe that’s why they perform so well in the first and second seasons when they aren’t favourites and worse in the third when everyone expects them to be good1.
From Porto in the Champions League to Chelsea (yes even with Abramovich’s riches they had something to prove) these teams were all united by the guiding belief that Mourinho would turn them from zeroes to heroes if they gave him everything.
I think you can say the same about this Roma side; they still don’t have the quality to compete in a 38-game season like Chelsea, but in the cups, he is allowing them the chance to write their names in the history books.
He has also assembled a team that perfectly blends generals and undervalued talent; Nemanja Matic, who has played for Mourinho multiple times in his career, has been ever-present in the midfield.
But then they have added the likes of Paulo Dybala, who was looking to prove himself after his torrid spell at Juventus was a masterstroke as he has provided 16 goals and 7 assists this season. Chris Smalling has also come into his own and has gone from a joke at Manchester United to one of Serie A’s best defenders.
There are several players who aren’t outstanding individually but thrive in the unit.
I would also expect that before their final against Sevilla, he was reminding them of how many times Sevilla had won this competition to keep their heads in the game (one that unfortunately continued).
With all that considered, the final was what you’d expect, it was scrappy and every single player was doing whatever it took to win (and that’s both teams).
Some Roma players dived for penalties and free kicks and sought to slow down the game whenever they needed to; arguing for every decision and stopping the flow. They embodied Mourinho’s mentality towards the game, ‘finals are to win, not to play'.
If it wasn’t clear before, Roma had completely bought into ‘Jose Culture’, even if the result didn’t go their way in the end with Sevilla winning yet another Europa League.
A team like Roma is just right for Mourinho. It’s a team where he can control the narrative and direct blame where he needs; a side where the scrutiny is neither too high nor too low, it’s in the Goldilocks zone in more ways than one.
There are no egos and if they emerge, he can remove them as needed. He must always be the biggest name in the room.
Whether that will continue going forward with expectations raised once again is yet to be seen, but as it currently stands Mourinho is currently the statesman of Rome and he shouldn’t go anywhere any time soon.
With that in mind, I think it would be a mistake for Jose Mourinho to move to PSG this summer if they asked for him. Yes, it would mean he was back at the very top again, but I don’t think they are right for ‘Jose Culture’.
Though the higher-ups in Paris will likely be looking at Jose’s impressive finals record and hoping that he can bring some of that magic to a team whose one goal has been to win the Champions League.
He may not have been able to overcome Sevilla’s dark magic in the Europa League and he will likely deflect the blame onto the referees performance, but rest assured whether he’s right back there next season or losing his head, if he’s at Roma next season it will be entertaining.
Probably a very simplified explanation but who knows, mentality contributes a lot.