With the usual foreboding sense of fear that overcomes any Roma fan the minute a club above them drops points, Giallorossi supporters were wary of today’s six-pointer against Napoli. After last week’s 2-0 over Caligari, the capital club was imbued with fresh optimism, doubly so thanks to Donyell Malen’s hot form and Bryan Zaragoza’s intriguing debut. However, with Roma fans being a fickle lot, we’ve been conditioned to expect the worst anytime Roma has a chance to gain ground on the likes of Milan,
Napoli, and especially Juventus.
On the order of AS Roman tragedies, playing Napoli to a 2-2 draw at a raucous Stadio Diego Maradona is pretty tame in comparison to the many forehead-slapping incidents we’ve seen over the years. Still, with a chance to move back into fourth place with a three-point cushion over Juventus, today’s result in Napoli feels like an opportunity lost. However, despite the doom and gloom, thanks to another Donyell Malen double dip, Roma did reclaim fourth place, albeit with a narrow margin over Juve.
And despite our collective trauma of too many six-pointers gone wrong, Malen and the Giallorossi lifted our spirits immediately on Sunday. In only the seventh minute, Evan Ndicka, Gianluca Mancini, and Zaragoza combined to create Malen’s fourth goal since joining the capital club last month.
After another surgically precise tackle by Ndicka, Daniele Ghilardi acted as an intermediary, shuffling the ball to Mancini at the midfield strip. From there, Roma’s newly masked madman played a beautiful long ball around the defense, finding Zaragoza in stride—and with a quick square ball from the Spaniard, Gasperini’s group grabbed an early lead.
Despite silencing the Maradona with a textbook Gasperini counterattack, the deluge of goals we’d hoped for never arrived. In fact, Roma struggled to establish any attacking momentum, ceding the possession and initiative to Antonio Conte’s club. With Malen cherry picking at the midfield stripe and nine outfield players behind the ball, Gasperini was content to take his chances on the counter, leaving Napoli to do all the passing, moving and running.
Given how well Ndicka, Mancini, and Zeki Celik were playing at the back, not to mention the reassurances of Mile Svilar in goal, we could hardly blame Gasp for playing it passive. However, we’ve come to learn one unquestionable axiom in all our years here at CdT: taking your foot off the proverbial gas seldom ends well.
While I’d argue with the use of the term goalzo here (it was a deflected goal, after all), Leonardo Spinazzola’s 40th-minute equalizer likely elicited more than its fair share of curses from Roma fans. With ample space to test Svilar, Spinazzola rifled a shot toward the top corner, taking a lucky bounce off Niccolo Pissili, to stun his former club minutes before the break.
You can catch the goal in the highlights embedded above, but if you’re wondering how he had so much time to attempt this shot, may I present this screenshot: Celik at least squares him up, but doesnt attempt a tackle, while Zaragoza was taking a leasurely stroll rather than helping hem in Spinazzoal; at least Pisilli threw himself in front of the ball.
But that’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. With 45 minutes to go, Roma had every chance in the world to pull off an upset on the road and seemed poised to claim the spoils in this six-pointer when Malen scored his second goal in the 71st minute, converting from the spot after Wesley was tripped in the box.
Roma may have avoided any glaring errors in the second half, but they lost the battle of the bench. With Wesley injured, Malen subbed off, and Dybala unavailable, Gasperini’s bench simply couldn’t keep pace with Conte’s second-half reinforcements, most notably Alisson Santos, who robbed Roma of two points with his late equalizer.
Taking advantage of more lax defending and questionable positioning from the Roma back line, the 23-year-old Brazilian beat Svilar low and away, drilling the ball under Mancini’s outstretched leg and tucking it inside the far post to steal a point in the 82nd minute. And with no bona fide threats in the final third, Roma was ill-equipped to stage a late comeback of their own.
Final Thoughts
While this was certainly an opportunity lost, leaving the Derby del Sole with one point pushed Roma back into fourth place. However, make no mistake: their precarious one-point advantage over Juventus will be the talking point from here on out, especially when the two clubs square off at the Olimpico on March 1st. And while the club can backdoor their way into the Champions League by winning the Europa League later this spring, the more direct route—finishing in the top four in Serie A—is the more predictable path back to their rightful spot among Europe’s elite.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen glimpses of the more clinical, direct football that Gasperini wants to implement. And with the new signings like Malen hitting their stride already, Roma is better positioned to cross the finish line with their dignity intact in May.
