Mourinho admits to frustrations at Roma despite win over Feyenoord

Jose Mourinho is one of the highest-paid football managers in the world

UEFA Europa League Mourinho admits to frustrations at Roma despite win over Feyenoord

Mark Kinyanjui 12:00 - 21.04.2023

Roma were nearly knocked out by Dutch league leaders Feyenoord in the quarterfinals of the Europa league.

AS Roma’s Portuguese head coach, Jose Mourinho has expressed his pride at being associated with the club but believes that the side can still do better in future endeavors.

Roma were nearly knocked out by Dutch league leaders Feyenoord in the quarterfinals of the Europa League on Thursday night and it had to take a dramatic equalizer by Paulo Dybala in the dying minutes of regulation time to force the tie into extra time, where goals by Stefan El Sharrawy and Lorenzo Pellegrini were enough to give them a 4-1 win.

"I'm happy here at Roma. I love the people and they like me,” the two-time Champions League winning manager said, “ Sometimes I'm frustrated but I'm sure there's room for improvement here," he added.

“The players were great. They showed great character, mentality, team spirit and maturity. They kept believing and handled the pressure well.”

Roma have made significant progress since Mourinho took charge of the club in 2021. After winning the UEFA Conference League in his debut season, he has overseen them jump into fourth place in Serie A this season, as well as achieve a semi-final place in the Europa League, where they will face Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen.

According to Understat, Roma possess the best defensive record in Serie A using the expected goals against (xGA) metric, with 23.27, while in attack, they possess the fourth best record, with 52.96 expected goals.

However, they have underperformed this metric by scoring just 42 goals, showing that they are creating chances especially helped by the signing of Paulo Dybala, but the forwards are not clinical enough.

Tammy Abraham has been particularly profligate, failing to build on from a stellar debut campaign by scoring just seven league goals from an xG tally of 11.84. You can therefore understand Mourinho’s frustration.

Mourinho was also quick to praise the efforts of Paulo Dybala despite probably being “better than Roma’s level”

"Dybala? He maybe thinks he can play in the best teams in the world, it's right; but here he's able to feel the joy".