Rome, the question of Jose Mourinho: the fans adore him but there is a future even without him

It was supposed to be and it wasn’t. It had to be the company. If not the most prestigious, certainly the most hyperbolic in its history. Winning the second consecutive European final with a club that has been there for a lifetime to lick the wounds of forty (Liverpool in the Champions League) and thirty years before (Inter in the UEFA Cup).

The Puskas Arena was supposed to be the theater of catharsis. Enough with the baleful memories of a square which, in the meantime, had developed a mystique of defeat. The almost smug memory of appointments and missed happinesses. The Fox of Setubal had studied everything in detail, had entered as never into the heads of his, which are now like his slippers. That Dybala from the first minute. That moving crowd, distributed between Budapest and the Olimpico. Children trembling in unison with their fathers and their elders. This exaggerated wait.

And now?

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It felt like a story already written. Only a sadistic god could enjoy plotting otherwise. Yes, the subtle perfidies of the referee, yes, the errors of the Volpe, who had guessed everything before and got everything wrong during (the substitutions made and not made, that Wijnaldum on the pitch, more Giorgino than Wijnaldum, embarrassing to say the least, one joke disguised as a footballer?, the choice of the penalty takers). Also put in a barely honest Sevilla who played their honest game. And now? Where does it start from? What if we left the army of television commentators who, for more than an hour, spoke only of Mourinho and his future, as if that brutal 146-minute battle had never happened? Reset. Never existed. The effort of those boys who, for two and a half hours, gasped, beat and let themselves be beaten to bring a trophy as a gift to their shaman. Not a word to them.

Requests

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Start from here. What if Roma resigned themselves to turning the page (Mourinho has made it clear that he can’t wait), without it turning out to be a tragedy? And if the unheard of is discovered, that there is life, is there Rome even after Mourinho? What if it were discovered that the result and identity can also be achieved through play and not just through the trenches? What if it turns out that forwards can go back to being forwards, and no longer an outpost of the midfielders (Abraham and Belotti have failed in a tactical context where Ronaldo the Phenomenon would also have failed)? What if it turns out that the demiurge on duty knows how to deal with the heads of football players to inculcate game plots and not beastly feelings of eternal emergency? If it turns out that the newcomer (poor whoever he will be, he will have to have the aptitude of San Sebastiano to let himself be pierced by a thousand arrows) will not feel the urgency to unleash the Luciferian eye every time and to tear the referee on duty to pieces , poor little man, will he fatally end up meditating acid revenge against the aggressor? And if, finally, we take note that a rock-hard Texan is needed to restore normality, starting with putting on the bench, instead of the exterminating angel, a good coach, who brings orgasms because he sees a dominant team, rather than a bunch of glorious and sometimes inglorious “bastards”. Educating the crowd to idolatry for the game and not for the people (Nils Liedholm passed through these parts, does anyone remember? And a certain Spalletti. Does anyone remember?).

The best

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Starting again from the very good that there is (it is not true that they are all “children” and “good”). The best Smalling ever, the huge Matic, the dazzling Dybala, the Pellegrini, Mancini, the Ibanez, the Cristante, the Zalewski, El Shaarawy himself and all those to come. Mou is a shaman. His word pierces your skin. By dint of talking about the limits and heroism of his Rome, the players believed in it and on Wednesday night 1-0 they closed themselves in their bunker of limited heroes.

Only the shirt

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Everything passes and even Mou will pass one day, like a solemn, magnificent hangover, from which the Roma supporters will recover who knows when and who knows what after-effects, certainly the consuming nostalgia of those who know they have lived through unrepeatable days. Because that’s Mourinho, a man on fire, and there’s nothing more exciting than seeing a man on fire full time. By setting fire to and incensing himself, Josè set fire to and incensed those around him. Sacristan, priest and deity of his own altar. It won’t be easy to erase the man of Romanist inebriation. To console thousands of fans who have lived a unique experience for two years. It would be enough to know that the current Mou is only the instrument of a nostalgia as old as the world. It would be enough to refer to the concept much heralded in the curves: “We only love the shirt”. And who proves to be in it with the utmost dedication, I add from my curve.