THE EURO FILES: Patience is wearing thin with bad boy Jose, while Jadon Sancho’s Dortmund return isn’t all rosy… and why the Spanish Super Cup is RIGGED to suit the established sides

Roma will face AC Milan at San Siro on Sunday without Jose Mourinho on a technical level. He is serving a suspension after receiving his fourth red card of the season against Atalanta last week.

It’s hard to say how well the ‘Bad Boy’ trope and the ‘world is against us’ narrative are holding up in Italy.

Everything indicates that things are no longer going well for the American owners, the Friedkin Group, who have not yet offered Mourinho a contract extension after the end of this season.

The Ultras have remained loyal thus far. A few weeks ago there was a banner saying ‘To hell with Mourinho’ on the training pitch.

But even they are beginning to wonder if the Emperor actually has no clothes on. It hurts that they have lost four of their last six games against neighbors Lazio and have not scored in the last four.

The latest defeat came in midweek, when they were defeated by Maurizio Sarri’s team in the Italian Cup quarter-final.

It was Rome’s worst derby since the previous one, with Mourinho’s side only managing a shot on target eight minutes from time.

He was right when he said his team lost to a ‘modern penalty’ after the penalty awarded by VAR led to the winner. But with no consolation for the domestic cup, Feyenoord awaiting the Europa League and the possibility of a defeat on Sunday that will leave them 13 points behind third-placed Milan, the horizon looks bleak.

Speaking about his red card last weekend, Atalanta coach Gian Piero Gasperini said: ‘He gets sent off every third week. It is impossible to referee these types of matches because of the conditions that are created.’

Mourinho and his coaching staff have been sent off a total of 28 times since he took charge, and the constant haranguing, complaining and goading creates an intimidating atmosphere that has drawn admiration from the Olympic Stadium faithful – and distracted attention from the football, or the lack of It.

Gasperini is not the only one who has spoken out. Last season, Salernitana sporting director Walter Sabatini complained: ‘After every decision by the referee, the entire (Roma) bench is on the pitch. It’s unbearable.’

Sabatini, a former player and football director at Roma, has also called Mourinho an ‘opium of the people’. It’s populism, and it only gets you so far: he invented the boogeyman and started a phoney war with the officials at Real Madrid, and for a while their fans fell for it.

In part it fueled their title victory over the best Barcelona team in history in 2012, but the title is short-lived once results decline.

Napoli’s disastrous defense of the title is partly a distraction from Roma’s shortcomings. Walter Mazzarri’s team has not scored in the last four games. But while there is chaos at Napoli, who are on their third coach in eight months, at Roma something should have emerged from a period of managerial stability.

If Mourinho fails to get his team back into the Champions League for a third season in a row, the owners may decide to make a change regardless of what the Ultras, who are loyal to Mourinho, want.

Sporting director Tiago Pinto has already agreed to resign at the end of this month. The departure of the man Mourinho hired feels like a harbinger of a coaching change.

The question is: where will he go next? Every career move now seems to be a step closer to Saudi Arabia. And every higgledy-piggledy performance, against the backdrop of choreographed hostility on the touchline, feels like another step away from his glory days at Porto, Chelsea and Inter, and from another crack at a big club where he could win a major trophy .

It’s not all rosy for Sancho on his return to Dortmund

Manchester United desperately trying to recapture value from wingers lost by loaning them out to Europe has had mixed results.

So far it is working with Mason Greenwood at Getafe. It failed miserably when Anthony Martial was sent to Seville. Now it is Borussia Dortmund’s turn with Jadon Sancho.

He is unlikely to start in Damstadt on Saturday, but Sancho has been given the number 10 shirt and the expectation is that he will be involved gradually.

Dortmund fans are generally positive about his return. He joined from Manchester City in 2018 at the age of 17 and scored 50 goals in 137 games before moving to United in 2021.

Some look back on his time so positively that they remember him as fondly as Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland. But there are others who also remember the occasional breaches of discipline, the fines for being late to training or being late for international duty.

Having fallen behind as a young player, he now has the greater responsibility to save Dortmund’s season.

Six games without a win at the end of last year, two mediocre draws in friendlies in January and the arrival of former players Nuri Sahin and Sven Bender to assist coach Edin Terzic speak of a club in desperate need of a lift.

That creates a lot of initial goodwill towards Sancho.

And after originally joining for £8m, then leaving for £73m and now loaned out again for £3m, he’s certainly good for the finances. It will also be good for United if he rediscovers his form.

Super Cup for the established order – just like the Super League

As talk about the Super League continues, it is worth bearing in mind how the finances are set up in the Spanish Super Cup, which has its classic final in Riyadh on Sunday.

Barcelona and Real Madrid were guaranteed around £5 million for their arrival alone. In addition, they earned an additional £645,000 for playing the semi-final and £1.3 million for winning the final, or £860,000 for losing it.

Osasuna, meanwhile, receive just £1.68m for taking part and would have earned just £430,000 if they had won it. It’s set up to suit the established clubs – pretty much the unspoken mission statement of the planned Super League.