Following Roma for the past decade has been an exercise in patience—at least if your goal was to be watching your club play in the Champions League. Season after season, Roma would combine deep runs in the Europa League (and, eventually, the Europa Conference League) with just barely missing out on Champions League qualification through Serie A.
It was a frustrating thing to watch, primarily because those deep runs in Europe paradoxically made it that much harder for Roma’s talented but thin sides
to compete in Serie A enough to fend off Italy’s other sides jockeying for Champions League qualification. The likes of Inter, Juventus, and Napoli hardly ever went deep in Europe, so once they were out, they could focus exclusively on league play.
Match Details
Date: September 10th
Kickoff: 18:45 CET/12:45 EDT
Venue: Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium, Istanbul
Referee: Jesus Gil Manzano (ESP)
As a result, Roma’s time in the Champions League desert didn’t kill their UEFA coefficient; to the contrary, as of today Roma has the thirteenth best coefficient in Europe, with Inter Milan the only Italian side ahead of them in the rankings. Yet a strong coefficient and a bunch of close but not cigar moments in the Europa League can’t warm the heart in the same way Champions League football does. It certainly doesn’t fill a club’s coffers in the same way, either.
Well, the wait is over. To paraphrase Ace Frehley, Roma is back in the Champions League groove.
My perspective on this match writ large is that Romanisti should simply enjoy being back in the Champions League. We’ve waited for far too long to hear The Championnnnnns again before a Roma match, and while the upcoming schedule (featuring matches against Real Madrid, Paris Saint Germain, and Manchester United) is a bruiser, that’s why Roma fought so hard to get to the Champions League in the first place. Granted, tomorrow’s match against Turkish giants Fenerbahçe should be an easier one; I believe in the Giallorossi’s ability to defeat a club whose star attacking players are Mason Greenwood and an aging Romelu Lukaku. Still, I hope everyone is able to hope for the win but appreciate the moments, no matter how far Roma ends up going in the Champions League.
(By the way, if Roma does crash out of the Champions League, that gives them the ability to exclusively focus on league play. Just saying.)
What to Watch For
How Much Energy Does Paulo Dybala Have?
Although there’s no doubt that the biggest story of Roma’s 2026 has been the transformation of Donyell Malen into a latter-day Marco Van Basten, a heaping amount of praise for the Giallorossi’s impressive start to the season has to be served to Paulo Dybala. La Joya leads all European leagues in assists, tallying four in three matches, and has not only linked up incredibly well with Malen, but has developed a fantastic one-two with new academy graduate Emanuele Lulli. The youngster has been an excellent addition to Gian Piero Gasperini’s side, but if there’s one player who has truly allowed him to become a star in the making, it’s Dybala.
Yet for all of Dybala’s world-class play to start the season, there is a little voice in my head consistently asking “How long can this last?” Dybala’s quality has never been up for debate; it’s his availability that’s been missing, with the 2025-2026 season being his most injury-ridden in a Roma kit. With that in mind, while I didn’t find it surprising that reports suggest Dybala will be starting tomorrow’s match against Fenerbahçe, I do wonder just how much he has in his legs at the moment after playing the full 90 against Atalanta.
Luckily for Roma and for Dybala, the Giallorossi now have an embarrassment of in-form riches to play in the attacking midfielder/forward behind Malen role in Gasperini’s tactics. From my vantage point, Dybala, Matías Soulé, and Rodrigo Mora are all able to play in those two spaces behind Malen, and the third of three who is left out of the starting lineup has typically gotten at least a half-hour of play time as a substitute. In my perfect world, Roma is able to get a goal or two in the net fairly quickly tomorrow, allowing Dybala to be the 60th-minute sub. The reports that suggest Dybala starts tomorrow also state that he will then be rested against Torino, but I have deeper concerns about keeping Dybala fit and healthy than just “will he be rested now or later.”
Just take a look at Soulé’s 2025/2026 season as evidence of what can happen if you run a player too hard too quickly to start the season. Soulé looked like the second coming of… Paulo Dybala… last fall, only to suffer a sports hernia that derailed what felt like his coming-out party as a Serie A superstar. If Roma wants to be a threat in Serie A and the Champions League, they need Dybala available all season (or at least as much of the season as possible). Subbing Dybala off if possible will be a step in the right direction to make sure the Giallorossi have him fit as a fiddle for the long term.
Is this Molina’s Moment?
Nahuel Molina’s start to his time in Rome has been a bit touch-and-go. The Argentine international has struggled with fitness since joining the club, allowing Emanuele Lulli to stake a claim to the starting right-back role over the course of the first three matches of Serie A. However, Molina’s first minutes in a Roma kit against Atalanta were intriguing; he may have had the benefit of fresh legs against a tired La Dea side, but Molina looked every bit as capable of playing in the attacking wing-back role that is so important to a Gasperini side as Lulli or Wesley do. That’s to be expected, of course; Molina is a fullback in his prime who logged over a hundred appearances for Atlético Madrid. Yet his taking to Gasperini’s tactics like a duck to water is intriguing for the same reason that the strong form of Dybala, Mora, and Soulé is intriguing: in a season where Roma must fight on many fronts, the most useful thing Tony D’Amico gave Gasp was options.
That makes tomorrow’s match against Fenerbahçe a true test of just how much optionality Roma has at right-back. If Molina is able to play from the start and impress, it means that the Giallorossi have three true options on the right moving forward: the Argentine, Lulli, and Devyne Rensch. I have faith that Molina will be up to the challenge, and if he is, it will do wonders for the ability to win Champions League matches while perhaps preserving opportunities for Lulli to impress in Serie A. Romanisti have not had to deal with this too much in the past because of how thin the squad has typically been, but depth is only useful if it results in regular rotation throughout the season. If Molina is able to start tomorrow and impress, that will be one more position in Gasperini’s starting eleven where the fate of the universe does not hinge on the health of one player. That could be critical for Roma’s big-picture hopes, both this season and in the future.
