José Mourinho's Regret Over Europa League Final Loss

José Mourinho has lived enough nights on the touchline to fill a library. League titles in four countries, European crowns with different clubs, an ego and aura to match. Yet when he is asked to choose one game to replay, one evening he would drag back from the past and rewrite, his answer comes without hesitation.

“Roma - Sevilla, Europa League final. Without Anthony Taylor.”

The line lands with a familiar sting. Time has moved on, jobs have changed, but that night in Budapest still burns.

The final that won’t let go

Mourinho’s Roma had already carved out their own chapter in European history. In 2022 they conquered the inaugural Europa Conference League, beating Feyenoord and ending an 11-year wait for major silverware in the Italian capital. That triumph did more than fill a trophy cabinet. It completed Mourinho’s unique UEFA treble – Champions League, UEFA Cup/Europa League and Conference League – and reawakened a city.

Rome exploded. The Giallorossi’s parade wound past the Colosseum and through Circus Maximus, a modern pilgrimage in club colours.

“When we won the Conference League in Roma, that city went mad,” Mourinho recalled on the Beast Mode On Podcast with Adebayo Akinfenwa. “I believe that we did to that city what Champions League winners cannot do in other cities. Roma is a city where people are really, really, really in love with that club. A giant club with incredible passion. Absolutely incredible.”

The Conference League was dismissed in some quarters as a third-tier competition. Roma and Mourinho turned it into something else entirely.

“Of course, when we won the Conference League it was the first season of the Conference League, I don't think Europe was giving [recognition] to the Conference League what it is giving now,” he said. “When we arrived in Rome and we went for the parade around the Colosseum, Circus Maximus, you realise what you gave to those people.”

That is why the following year’s Europa League final cut so deep. Roma stood on the brink of back-to-back European titles, only for Sevilla – serial specialists in this competition – to drag the game to penalties and win it there. Mourinho, beaten in a European final for the first time, turned his fury on referee Anthony Taylor and his Premier League-based team of officials. The fallout was as fiery as the match.

Everyone from that night has carried on. Careers moved, contracts signed, new chapters opened. Yet for Mourinho, the scar tissue is still fresh enough that, when offered a do-over, he goes straight back to Budapest and the man with the whistle.

Back to the Bernabéu

Now he circles back to one of his old kingdoms. Mourinho has returned to Real Madrid, signing a three-year deal and stepping once more into the dressing room he once tried to bend to his will between 2010 and 2013. Back then he delivered La Liga and the Copa del Rey, breaking Barcelona’s domestic dominance and leaving his mark on a club where the standards never drop.

He insists that dressing room remains the pinnacle.

He calls Madrid the best he has ever walked into, and it is hard to argue when you scan the names. Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior – a new generation of galácticos ready to be moulded, challenged, provoked.

Mourinho has won major honours in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain. He has lifted Champions League trophies with Porto and Inter, Premier League titles with Chelsea, domestic cups across the continent. Yet he keeps coming back to Rome, to that open-top bus crawling past ancient stone and roaring crowds, as the moment that moved him most.

“I did a few!” he said, when asked which achievement makes him most proud in a 26-year managerial career. The list is long, the answer pointed. Roma’s Conference League sits right near the top.

One city, one wound, one more shot

The contradiction is pure Mourinho. The man who has conquered Europe wants back the one final that got away. The manager who has stood on the biggest stages in club football talks about a third-tier UEFA trophy as if it were the Holy Grail, because of what it meant to a city that lives and breathes its club.

Roma gave him a parade through history. Sevilla and Anthony Taylor left him with a night he cannot forget.

Now he walks back into the Bernabéu, older, still bristling, still chasing trophies. The medals already won are secure. The regrets, clearly, are not.