ROME (AP) — 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.
Disappointing results for Roma include a derby loss to Lazio, a 3-0 beating by Mourinho's former club Inter, and now second defeats this season to both AC Milan and Juventus in the space of four days.
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 dropped to eighth.
IBRA MATCHES RONALDO
Zlatan Ibrahimović matched a mark set by Cristiano Ronaldo, and Theo Hernández scored twice, as depleted AC Milan won 3-0 at 10-man Venezia to move top.
Ibrahimović opened the scoring with barely two minutes on the clock. It was the 80th team the veteran forward has scored against in the top five European leagues. Ibrahimović and Ronaldo — who did so against Burnley on Dec. 30 — are the only players to reach that milestone since 2000.
Venezia put up a spirited defense but the match changed early in the second half as the home side swiftly went from 1-0 down to 3-0 down and with a player sent off after defender Michael Svoboda was shown a straight red card for denying a clear goalscoring opportunity.
The Rossoneri moved two points above Inter Milan, which hosts Lazio later.
Milan had won its opening match of the year 3-1 against Roma but was still without more than 10 players due to coronavirus, injuries and African Cup of Nations duty.
However, it got off to the perfect start when Rafael Leão cut inside from the left and rolled across for Ibrahimović to tuck in from point-blank range.
Milan threatened to double its lead several times but had to wait until the start of the second half to do so thanks to another assist from Leão, who threaded the ball through for Hernández to burst down the left and cut inside before blasting past Sergio Romero.
And any hope Venezia had of getting back into the match was all but gone by the 58th minute when Svoboda was sent off for blocking a Hernández shot on the line with his arm.
Hernández, who was wearing the captain’s armband, sent the resulting penalty into the top right corner.
VIRUS-HIT UDINESE
Atalanta started 2022 in emphatic fashion as it 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.
Udinese had 12 players out with COVID-19 but the match went ahead and Atalanta was 3-0 up by halftime following goals from Mario Pašalić, Luis Muriel and Ruslan Malinovskyi. Muriel added a second after the break and Joakim Mæhle also netted his first goal for Atalanta, three minutes before Matteo Pessina’s stoppage-time effort.
Atalanta remained fourth, two points behind Napoli but having played a match less.
Napoli beat Sampdoria 1-0 thanks to an acrobatic, first-half goal from Andrea Petagna.
Also, Giacomo Raspadori and Gianluca Scamacca scored two apiece as Sassuolo won 5-1 at 10-man Empoli.
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Matar reported from Milan.
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