‘I deserve more,’ Jose Mourinho and the true cost of Roma’s Europa League final

How will Marta feel about her father? Was it really worth it in the end? Marta’s graduation ceremony was on Wednesday, but her old man couldn’t make it. “He tells me he’s got tickets for the Europa League final in Budapest. It’s Roma-Sevilla,” Marta told RAI Radio 2. “He’s 60 and his football team comes before his daughter.” Mai sola mai. No fan of Roma can let her go anywhere on her own. Never. The story went viral in Italy. At the Puskas Arena, banners in the Roma end claimed: “We’re all Marta’s father.” They’d all left someone behind in order to be with Roma. Even Damiano, the lead singer from Maneskin, dyed his hair half red, half yellow and road tripped through Slovenia and Croatia to make it.

Rather than Marta, Jose Mourinho’s mind seemed to be on a sort of football martyrdom. “I said we’ll either leave here with the trophy or dead.” His players were “dead tired” but they were going to make a sacrifice for the Figli della Lupa, the children of the She Wolf. Paulo Dybala played through the pain barrier, an ice wrap around his left ankle. Mourinho had said he might only play 15 or 20 minutes but it was a white lie. A case of classic Jose. Dybala started and scored his 15th goal of the season. For a time, it seemed like Roma were bound for back-to-back European trophies.

Echoes of last season’s Conference League final reverberated around the Puskas Arena. In Tirana, Roma centre-back Gianluca Mancini lofted a ball into the box for Nicolo Zaniolo’s winning goal. In Budapest, he stepped up again, playing Dybala through to open the scoring. Briefly it looked like Mourinho’s undefeated record in European cup finals was possessed of a power that not even Sevilla, a club that effectively owns this competition, could resist. Usually a single goal is enough for Roma to roll the Game Over credits for their opponents. They have kept 21 clean sheets this season and the last player to score against a Mourinho team in a European final was Henrik Larsson 30 years ago.

In the end, though, Dybala was sat on the turf, his head buried in a bib as he sobbed. In one respect this final ended like the World Cup in Lusail as Sevilla’s defender Gonzalo Montiel once again scored the winning penalty in the deciding shoot-out. However, this time Dybala could not celebrate. Mancini was also heaving under the weight of the emotional turmoil stirring within himself. His own-goal let Sevilla back in the final. Then his miscued penalty left him feeling responsible for Roma’s defeat. “Gianlu!” a fan called out from behind me. “Mancio!” the supporter shouted, hoping to get his attention. All he wanted was to console him in the way Leonardo Spinazzola was trying to do from Mancini’s shoulder.

“It’s hard to lose a final on penalties,” Bryan Cristante said. Wednesday felt like 1984 for a new generation. As a boy, Francesco Totti…