ROME, Jan 10: José Mourinho left Italy more than a decade ago as a Champions League winner, Serie A champion and Italian Cup victor after guiding Inter Milan to a memorable “tripletta” – treble.
Flash forward a dozen years and the outspoken coach’s return this season at Roma has been characterized by a series of frustrating losses – the latest a 4-3 home defeat to Juventus in the Italian league on Sunday.
Making matters even worse is that Roma wasted a two-goal advantage over Juventus on Sunday.
Manuel Locatelli, Dejan Kulusevski and Mattia De Sciglio completed the comeback for Juventus at the Stadio Olimpico and Juventus goalkeeper Wojciech Szczęsny – who formerly played for Roma – saved a late penalty from Lorenzo Pellegrini.
With Mourinho drawing more and more from his various spells in the Premier League, Roma became the first Serie A club in modern times to start three English players as newly signed Ainsley Maitland-Niles joined Chris Smalling and Tammy Abraham in the opening 11.
Abraham opened the scoring with a header early on and Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pellegrini – with a perfectly struck free kick – made it 3-1 for Roma after an equalizer from Paulo Dybala.
Juventus lost striker Federico Chiesa to apparent injury before the break but still managed to come out strong in the wild second half.
Juventus is fifth, three points behind Atalanta and the final Champions League berth, while Roma is seventh.
Center back Alessandro Bastoni scored one goal and set up another as Serie A leader Inter beat visiting Lazio 2-1 to avenge its only defeat of the season.
First, Bastoni scored with an accurate, low shot from beyond the area, then he provided a cross that Milan Škriniar headed in after Ciro Immobile had equalized for Lazio.
Inter, which has a game in hand, again moved one point ahead of AC Milan.
Atalanta won 6-2 at COVID-hit Udinese. It was Atalanta’s first match of the new year after Thursday’s home match against Torino was postponed because of a number of coronavirus cases in the visiting squad.
Napoli beat Sampdoria 1-0 and Sassuolo won 5-1 at 10-man Empoli. (AP)
