Mourinho: Roma a work in progress, titles to follow

ROME: Jose Mourinho on Thursday launched into life with new club Roma, saying his latest challenge is very much a work in progress but vowing that trophies will follow in due course.

The 58-year-old Portuguese arrives back in Serie A 11 years a er leading Inter Milan to an unprecedented treble of the Champions League, the Serie A title and the Italian Cup.

But he also has a point to prove a er an underwhelming season and a half ended in the sack at To enham last April and a difficult two-and-a-half seasons with Manchester United also culminated in dismissal.

“You talk of the title and we talk of time, a project, work. Titles are words, easy promises. Titles will come,” Mourinho insisted following his official presentation as he held court at a press conference before some 70 Italian and foreign journalists.

“But the club does not want isolated success. It wants to get somewhere and stay there,” he insisted, saying Roma do not seek “success today and problems tomorrow, but to achieve something sustainable over time”.

Roma have pinned their faith on Mourinho as a man whose experience of the continental game – but not least, of Serie A itself – can return the ‘Giallorossi’ to distant former glories a er they could only place a modest seventh last season.

Their last major honour was an Italian Cup in 2008 and they have li ed the Scude o or league crown only twice in the post-war era – in 1983 and 2001, the la er triumph under Fabio Capello. - ‘Not on vacation’ That patchy record, Mourinho declared, means his goal is to “construct” a club in a “durable” fashion rather than come in promising to deliver instant success and he stressed he was “not here on vacation” but ready to work.

“The word ‘time’ sometimes doesn’t exist in football but here it does exist and it is a fundamental word,” insisted the man who took unfancied Porto to a shock European Cup triumph in 2004 before going on to win three Premier League titles with Chelsea across two spells which bookended a highly successful