Roma’s on-again, off-again Champions League pursuit has found new life over the past week. Thanks to consecutive losses by our friends in Como, Roma enters today’s Round 33 fixture against Atalanta with a chance to move past Como in the standings and into fifth place. And, if Juventus falls to Bologna on Sunday, the Giallorossi could be tied with the Old Lady in fourth place with five matches remaining.
Of course, since this is Roma we’re discussing, the club isn’t entering this match free from distraction—far
from it. While the club is dealing with its usual injury woes, the growing divide between manager Gian Piero Gasperini and senior adviser Claudio Ranieri continued to dominate the headlines, punctuated by an emotional pre-match press conference in which Gapserini left the podium abruptly.
And we haven’t even discussed today’s opponents, 7th-place Atalanta, a club that has defeated Roma in five of their past six meetings. While Atalanta’s Champions League hopes are more dire than Roma’s, they are only seven points behind Juventus and need these three points as badly as the Giallorossi do.
