Mourinho is special one for fifth time in Europe
Jose Mourinho said he and Roma had written new pages in their history after the Italian club won their first major European title in more than 60 years in last night’s Europa Conference League final in Albania.
Nicolo Zaniolo’s 32nd-minute strike proved decisive as Mourinho’s team saw off Dutch side Feyenoord in Tirana to become the inaugural winners of European football’s new third club competition.
The victory extended Mourinho’s perfect record in major European finals to five trophies in five matches, having also won the 2003 Uefa Cup and 2004 Champions League finals with Porto, the 2010 Champions League final with Inter Milan and the 2017 Europa League final with Manchester United.
“Today wasn’t work, this was history,” said the Portuguese who is also the first manager to win a European trophy with four different clubs. “Either you write it or you don’t and we wrote it. I’ve been at Roma for 11 months and I realized the moment I arrived what it meant – that they were waiting for this.
“This remains in the history of Roma, but also mine. I was told that only I, Sir Alex [Ferguson] and Giovanni Trapattoni won European trophies in three different decades. It makes me feel a little old, but it’s nice for my career.”
Match-winner Zaniolo has often been labelled as Italy’s most talented young player. But he has been held back by two serious knee injuries, one of which kept him out for all of last season and prevented him from taking part in the Azzurri’s run to the European Championship title.
At 22 years and 327 days, he became the youngest Italian player to score in a European final since Alessandro Del Piero’s goal at 22 years and 200 days for Juventus in the loss to Borussia Dortmund in the 1997 Champions League final.
Roma (3-4-1-2) Rui Patricio; Mancini, Smalling, Ibanez da Silva; Karsdorp (Vina 89), Mkhitaryan (Oliviera 17), Cristante, Zalewski (Spinazzola 67); Pelegrini; Zaniolo (Veretout 67), Abraham (Shomurodov 89). Subs Perez, Maitland-niles, Kumbulla, Bove, Afena-gyan, Cerantula Fuzato, El Shaarawy. Booked Pellegrini, Zalewski, Rui Patricio, Spinazzola.
Feyenoord (4-2-3-1) Biljow; Geertruida, Trauner (Pederson 74), Senesi, Malacia (Jahanbakhsh 89); Aursnes, Kokcu (Walemark 88); Nelson (Linssen 74), Til (Toornstra 59), Sinistera; Dessers. Subs Hendrix, Sandler, Cojocaru, Marciano, Hendriks, Jansen, Hall.
Booked Trauner.
Referee Istvan Kovacs (Romania).