After the Bologna – AS Roma (2-0) match, José Mourinho responded to the extremely painful substitution he made in the second half. The Portuguese sent Renato Sanches on at the start of the half, but brought him back in the 64th minute.

Roma found themselves trailing 1-0 at halftime in Stadio Renato Dall'Ara on Sunday evening due to a goal by Nikola Moro. At half-time, Mourinho decided to leave Leonardo Spinazzola in the dressing room and send Sanches onto the field.

Shortly after his entrance, the score was 2-0, for which Sanches was no fault, and Roma had to continue in pursuit. After more than an hour of play, Mourinho surprised friend and foe by bringing Sanches, who had not suffered from an injury and had not received a yellow card, to the side for Edoardo Bove.

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Renato Sanches himself can hardly believe it when, after barely fifteen minutes of coming on, his time is already up according to Mourinho ??#ZiggoSport #SerieA #BolognaRoma pic.twitter.com/4vOAi1TBeZ

— Ziggo Sport Voetbal (@ZS_Voetbal) December 17, 2023

Afterwards Mourinho declared his substitution. “With Renato we live in a situation of hope. We always think that space, certain responsibilities and adrenaline is the ideal way to help him make his leap forward. He has emotional scars and many fears due to past injuries.”

The 26-year-old Sanches, who was known as a top talent in his younger years, has had extremely bad luck with injuries to all kinds of body parts in his career, such as his hamstring, knee, ankle and various muscles.

“He works at low intensity in everything we do. He improves in content and workload, but never in intensity. In the last match against Sheriff (Tiraspol, ed.) he had given us hope for 60 minutes, and today I thought about using him because the team could have benefited from his quality.”

“But then I realized I made a mistake because he wasn't ready to make this jump in such an intense environment. I'm sorry… The last time I did this to a player was Matic, and I'm sorry I feel terrible, but today I couldn't let the team down with a player who had become frustrated. I had to make this decision.”

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