Jose Mourinho can help Renato Sanches get career back on track at Roma

Seasoned manager is looking to maximise the potential of various former prodigies

Renato Sanches was earmarked for greatness early on but has failed to justify the hype. EPA

Almost everybody who was there can remember the worst pass Renato Sanches ever made. It was so poorly placed it became a viral sensation.

He was playing for Swansea City, then of the English Premier League, on a late November night at Chelsea. He was wearing the Welsh club’s away kit, a similar share of red to a large logo on one of the perimeter advertising hoardings at Stamford Bridge.

Ball at his feet in midfield, under no particular opposition pressure, Sanches side-footed the ball directly out of play, over the touchline, to no teammate but directly at said logo. In the technical area, his head coach Paul Clement lowered his head into his hand in disbelief. Spectators laughed. Sanches was substituted at half-time.

The moment remains infamous, vivid in the memory because it marked the nadir of a young, hyped player’s sudden plunge. Sanches had found himself playing for Swansea – misplacing a pass, and blaming it on the visual disturbance of an advertising board – on loan barely six months after he had picked up a Bundesliga winners medal with Bayern Munich. Not much more than a year had passed since he won Euro 2016 as a teenager with Portugal and starred in Benfica’s league-winning side.

That year he won the ‘Golden Boy’ award, the prize for the best footballer under 21 in Europe. He had a queue of suitors. Bayern had agreed a transfer fee with Benfica of €35 million well ahead of the Euros, mindful other superclubs would be chasing him ever harder once they saw him galvanise the midfield in Portugal’s historic triumph.

It seemed a long way down to being shipped off to Swansea. Bayern had lost faith in him in the course of his first season in Bavaria. But the story of Sanches, or simply Renato as he is mostly known, would have many more fluctuations. It still does, and keeps straying from the trajectory gloomily forecast for him as he turned 20, and found that even relegation-bound Swansea had little use for him.

Here, it was assumed, was a classic sporting tale: too much, too young, a prodigy overhyped and overrated then painfully exposed by the hard, hurried world of the adult sport. “He had big talent, but he stopped learning when he left Benfica and went to one of the biggest clubs in the world,” concluded Carlos Carvalhal, his Portuguese compatriot and the manager who replaced Clement at Swansea.

Five years later, the verdict on Renato is more nuanced. The learning did not stop but re-started, albeit in fits and starts but enough of them to make it unwise to predict that, as he approaches his 26th birthday next month, Renato will never climb close to the peaks predicted for him as a dynamic all-round midfielder.

He has added three more league titles - one with Bayern where he returned, and found a happier niche, from Swansea; another as part of the upstart Lille team of 2020/21 – and has again come into the view of superclubs, as did in his wonderboy days.

He spent last season at Paris Saint-Germain, who bought him from Lille and where won Ligue 1 for the second season running. Last month, Renato was recalled to the Portugal national squad for the first time since 2021.

Next month, Renato anticipates another restart, a probable departure from Paris with the new PSG head coach Luis Enrique seemingly less of an enthusiast about him than his predecessor Christophe Galtier - who also oversaw Renato’s renaissance at Lille - had been.

A journey that has passed through Lisbon, Munich, South Wales, northern France and Paris may soon be heading not downwards but sideways, and to Rome. An adventure in Serie A to add to his experiences of the Bundesliga, the Premier League, and to the top divisions of Portugal and France, beckons.

Roma have been in prolonged negotiations with PSG over a loan for Renato, with a view to a permanent signing. If they bear fruit, he would certainly add to his learning. Jose Mourinho, his compatriot, is about to begin his third season in charge of Roma, and, working with a restricted budget, is backing himself to maximise the potential of various former prodigies.

Paulo Dybala, once a celebrated teenaged starlet, joined Mourinho at Roma from Juventus last season, and at 29, had his most effective year as a goalscorer since 2017/18. Among this summer’s arrivals at Roma is Houssem Aouar, the Algeria international and former Golden Boy nominee, now 25 and keen to fulfill the forecasts made of his great playmaking potential during his breakthrough period at Olympique Lyonnais.

“Mourinho had a big part in my deciding on Roma,” said Aouar, “I couldn’t say no to the chance to be coached by a phenomenon.” Renato hears that, and knows there are many years of learning left if he plans them wisely.