Very soon, this forecast is daring, the Italians and the Romans in particular will be spoiled for their nickname – it is being used so inflationarily, on all media channels and in every combination: The return of the “Special One”, by José Mourinho, in Serie A, the league of the new European champions, is perceived as a gift. Undeserved and surprising. In Rome, where the 58-year-old football coach from Setúbal, Portugal is actually training the eternally unsuccessful Roma, they submit to Mourinho with such devotion that he should deliver the best. It always happens very quickly here. Rome is known as the “piazza difficile”, a difficult place with fans who are in parliament all the time and talk radios around the clock. Thumbs up, thumbs down – the thread of patience is thin.
Mourinho knows that, he was employed by Inter Milan for a few years, he knows the milieu. His Italian is still fluent, better than his English. Only the word “Trigoria” just doesn’t work for him: The emphasis is on the o, but he always pulls the second i for a long time. Trigoria, of all things – that’s the name of the not very glamorous training center of the Associazione Sportiva on the Roman outskirts. Why is Mourinho doing the footballing province?
On the other hand, if he wins in Rome after he hasn’t won very often recently, then he’ll make himself immortal. Twenty years ago it was Roma’s most recent championship title, a generation. The Romans reportedly pay him a base salary of seven million euros, with a few more million this year from Tottenham Hotspur, which laid him off. He may not be that “special” anymore, but in Italy it is enough to become the league’s poster boy.
Everything speaks of the coaches, of Mourinho and his rivals
At the beginning of the Italian championship this weekend, the stadiums may be filled to 50 percent again, but only with spectators with the “Green Pass”, the Covid certificate, placed in the chess pattern. But everything speaks of the coaches, of Mourinho and his rivals. The clubs are all short of cash, some are deeply in debt, and there was not enough money for prominent player transfers – at least in terms of purchases. High-flyers from last season had to be let go: Romelu Lukaku moved from Inter Milan to Chelsea, Achraf Hakimi from Inter and Gianluigi Donnarumma from Milan to Paris Saint-Germain. And so this time the focus was mainly on the “Mister”, on the power of words and tactics: May the coaches make a lot out of a little. Of the “seven sisters”, the best clubs in the country, only the ever-fairy-tale Atalanta Bergamo and AC Milan have retained their previous coaches: Gian Piero Gasperini and Stefano Pioli, respectively. Everyone else switched.
Lazio Rome hired Maurizio Sarri, who has given his name to a football ideology since his time at Napoli: In “Sarrismo” all players are constantly on the move, like gyroscopes on autopilot. But it will take years for everything to come together really well. Sarri replaces Simone Inzaghi, who recently led Lazio to considerable consistency with a narrow bench and has now accepted the most ungrateful of all tasks at Inter: He should make Antonio Conte forget, the master coach, ideal type of a key coach. Conte sensed early on that the Chinese owners of Inter, the Zhangs from the electronics company Suning, would demobilize the winning team with sales in order to get their disastrous finances under control – and left. In Naples they rely on Luciano Spalletti, a hiking trainer with the self-made aura of a quasi-spiritual guru. And at Juventus Turin you think about faded glory. Massimiliano Allegri, the cold “Max”, is back without him after two years with little titles.
Ronaldo’s agent was looking for an alternative in half of Europe
It must feel like a particularly sweet revenge: What did you dream of a game revolution at Juventus in his absence, most recently with Andrea Pirlo in the coaching position. The “Signora” was supposed to be sexy and finished fourth, 13 points behind champions Inter Milan. Allegri, meanwhile, took long and well-paid vacations, kept himself in shape and learned English, and was predicted to have a career in the Premier League. But actually he only dreamed of this triumphant comeback. It is what the Italians call a “risultista”: one for whom only the result counts. In his first five years as coach of Juventus, Allegri scored 191 wins in 271 games. Juve with the “Result Max” is now once again the big favorite.
Cristiano Ronaldo is likely to stay, even though his agent spent a summer looking for an alternative in half of Europe that would match the ambitions of his now 36-year-old client. In vain, he stays against his will, already in the preseason he showed his displeasure with every fiber of his body. CR7 has this tendency to expressive gestures. Allegri called Ronaldo “added value” of the team, in Italian the term “valore aggiunto” sounds more like added value. After long negotiations, Juventus brought Manuel Locatelli from Sassuolo, 23 years old, one of Calcio’s great hopes and Azzurri’s second playmaker. The young man’s services cost 35 million euros. The operation will not appear in Turin accounting until 2023, otherwise it would not have been possible.
Like many other Azzurri, Locatelli turned down offers from abroad. With the exception of Jorginho, Marco Verratti, Donnarumma and Emerson, all players from the European championship squad will stay in Italy, at least for the time being. The Italians use this as proof that Serie A didn’t deserve the shrill swan song of the past few years. In any case, the streaming service DAZN pays 840 million euros for the rights to Serie A and is now replacing the Sky Italia platform as the main image supplier. Whereby: DAZN doesn’t have everything exclusive either. And Sky keeps the Champions League, the Premier League, Ligue 1 with Leo Messi, the German Bundesliga for itself. Because of the advantages of the competition: In the end, Italians interested in football will need at least two subscriptions and probably also two decoders. Amazon Prime is also taking part, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset secured a number of premier-class games in addition to the trophy. It’s a mess. The newspapers try to unravel it with long explanations – unsuccessfully, as one must say.
Mourinho now no longer has an alibi, the squad is very appealing
The leaves will not lack pretty stories. At Milan, for example, they are excited about the storm of the “vecchietti”, the old men: Zlatan Ibrahimovic, almost 40, and Olivier Giroud, also 34, are supposed to give the goal statistics the right balance. The Frenchman came very cheaply from Chelsea in the summer. Perhaps the “vecchietti” storm in a duo from time to time. In general, the average age of the star strikers in Serie A is higher than in any other major European championship.
Tammy Abraham from Chelsea, 23, Roma’s new nine and successor to Edin Dzeko, 35, who is now storming for Inter, brings a bit of freshness. At 45 million euros, Abraham is the most expensive transfer in this dry summer market, an extravaganza. “The Special One” had specifically requested him. And so the American owners of the Roma, the Friedkin family from Texas, car importers and film producers, couldn’t let their hair down. Mourinho now no longer has an alibi, the squad is very appealing. “We’re not special,” he said, “but we’re good enough to always win.”
The club likes to advertise with the Portuguese on a white Vespa, a yellow-red scarf tied around his neck. The image of “Mou” on the Wasp, a bit like Nanni Moretti in the film “Caro Diario”, initially appeared as public wall art in Testaccio, a Roman quarter, the heart of Romanismo. A street artist put it on the paper, no sooner had the trainer signed with the many trophies in his luggage. A nice, romantic promise. If only it weren’t for the many potholes in Roman traffic.