It is better to lose 4-0 once than 1-0 four times, Mourinho said after the debacle with Udinese. But he wouldn’t be the one not to take a dig at the referees

José Mourinho managed to lure a number of great reinforcements to AS Roma in the summer, which made them the dark horse of the current Serie A season. This his charges have so far managed to fulfil to a tee, until Sunday’s game against Udinese, however, which brought their feet back to earth.

Everything went wrong for the Roman side right from the start on Sunday when Destiny Udogie scored in the fifth minute, taking advantage of Rick Karsdorp’s clumsy attempt to head the ball down to the keeper.

After that Paulo Dybala had several interesting chances, unfortunately for the visiting team without success, whereupon another penalty came in the 56th minute when Lazar Samardzic committed to a shot, unfortunately for Rui Patricio the ball was kicked so well that it bounced off the ground in front of him and the helpless AS goalkeeper had to go for the ball in the net.

Gianluca Mancini almost scored the next time, placing a header from a corner straight into the bar of Marco Silvestri’s goal. Udinese then added two more goals to move into fourth place ahead of fifth-placed AS Roma.

This is the first league defeat for Mourinho’s team, as apart from the three wins they managed to pick up a point for their draw with Juventus.

“It was a difficult game, a difficult opponent who knows how to play these types of games. But I have to say that I prefer to lose one game 4: 0 than four games 1: 0. It’s hard for us, but that’s life, we have another game on Thursday and we’re moving on,” the Portuguese coach told DAZN.

” When you lose 4::0 you can’t talk about the referees, but when we heard that this referee would be officiating Sunday’s game, we realised that he was perfect for a team like Udinese, who are also playing at home. The first yellow card says it all.”

On Thursday, AS Roma will visit Ludogorets, after which they will face another league match against Empoli. After the Europa League clash with HJK, Mourinho and co. will face two strong teams, Atalanta and Inter.

Serie A, DAZN