Jose Mourinho Once Trolled Serie A Rival Club He Is Now Set To Coach: 'Zero Titles'

The announcement of Jose Mourinho as the AS Roma manager came in as an absolute revelation to the football world.

No one expected the surprising move plotted by the club's chairman Dan Friedkin, which refuted earlier Italian reports that Maurizio Sarri was on his way to take over at Stadio Olimpico.

The Athletic's James Horncastle aptly described the shock signing in his recent report.

"The Friedkins have kept their cards very close to their chest and when the time for the big reveal came, the shock was palpable. They deserve credit for keeping this a secret in a town where there are no secrets," he wrote.

Mourinho was fired by Tottenham Hotspur last April following a tumultuous, trophy-less 17-month stint with the English Premier League side.

The Spurs are due for another disastrous finish, currently sixth in the Premier League table, and have relieved Mourinho before matters got worse.

Now, the Portuguese head coach is hired with the task of elevating Roma, which has not seen major league success in recent seasons under Paul Fonceca, Claudio Ranieri and Eusebio Di Fancesco.

After a string of second and third-place finishes in the Italian league in the mid-2010s, Roma faltered to sixth in 2019 and fifth in 2020.

In the current season, they are seventh at 55 points, considerably behind sixth-running Lazio (64) and fifth-placed Napoli (67).

Interestingly, the decorated 58-year-old manager's return to Serie A comes at the expense of the very rival he once trolled.

As strikingly captured by Newcastle in his piece, Mourinho was the manager of Inter Milan from 2008 to 2010, and Roma was one of the clubs biggest rivals in the late 2000s.

"Roma were his Inter side’s biggest rivals back in the day and Mourinho used to troll them and his other competitors saying they’d finish with “zeru tituli“ — no titles," Newcastle emphasized.

Indeed, Roma finished second in the league table when Mourinho led Inter to the 2010 Serie A title, the same year he anchored the club to an Italian treble by winning the Coppa Italia and Scudetto in the same season—an accomplishment still unprecedented until today in Italian football history.

As if taken straight out of the pages of a Hollywood movie plot, Mourinho's arrival at Roma is a reality he has to deal with now.

Now, he has to thrive to change his recent reputation as a manager and bolster his coaching legacy.