Twenty years on from his first European triumph, the Jose Mourinho template is still paying dividends. Let the opposition have the ball. Let them make the mistakes. Bayer Leverkusen were totally free to drive themselves to distraction at the Stadio Olimpico, a team eager to play the match at pace dragged into a turgid, tetchy affair they could never win.
Now Mourinho finds himself 90 minutes away from another European final with Roma, a chance to go back-to-back with first Conference League and then Europa League. He will be the last person who needs reminding that he has never lost any of his previous five continental finals. He probably does not need telling that another European crown would give him more than Pep Guardiola, Louis van Gaal and Zinedine Zidane.
On the basis of Thursday’s game, Roma are eminently capable of progressing to Budapest solely off the back of Edoardo Bove’s snapped effort on the hour. They might have allowed Leverkusen to have 60-plus percent of the possession but for 89 minutes of this game, Rui Patricio had only a solitary save to make. Roma spoiled, they clipped and they needled but their defense was diligent and they posed a continuous threat off set pieces. By the final whistle, they had left Bayer Leverkusen with a sense of bafflement and persecution, Florian Wirtz’s sarcastic applause of the officials typical of the distraction to which Mourinho can drive his opponents.
It was not destined to go this way. Early on Leverkusen looked like they might have the guile to prise their hosts apart, their intricate play swiftly taking themselves Ultimately they produced what might have been the best of the match inside the first minute, Moussa Diaby gliding from his perch on the right flank into midfield. Florian Wirtz took the attack on there, laying it wide to Pierro Hincapie. His cross to the edge of the box was met by a tame Robert Andrich effort, anything with a…
