heading for three straight seasons finishing outside of the top five in the league, the club’s worst run in three years.
Roma might have spent a lot to support Mourinho in his first season, but in subsequent windows the club transferred a lot of players out, leaving a positive net spend of €130m. True, but that’s because they breached FFP and had to balance the books, remember? And even then, he chose to have the club ship out younger players who could fetch a transfer fee (Cengiz Ünder, Pau López, Nicolò Zaniolo, Felix Afena-Gyan, Roger Ibañez, Justin Kluivert) in order to replace them with veterans on high salaries, which is why the wage bill was so high: (Romelu Lukaku, Renato Sanches, Leandro Paredes, Paulo Dybala, Nemanja Matic, Gini Wijnaldum, Andrea Belotti.)
Roma’s sporting director, Mourinho’s countryman, Tiago Pinto, generally helped him execute that transfer strategy, as did his agent, Jorge Mendes, who was involved in a number of the club’s deals. Mourinho knew what he was getting into, what the financial restraints were going to be and what the budgets were going to be and he was on board with it, just as long as he got to dictate the transfer strategy, which he did, with help from his trusted friends.
