“You need a solid group, which luckily, we have. You must never undermine that. We have really great players here and we have faith in everyone. There isn’t a standard approach to managing periods in which you have a lot of games. You take it as it comes and hope to get it right. After the international break, there will be very few days between matches. If a player is fit, he carries on. If I see that someone’s fatigued, I’ll substitute him and wait for him to get back on form. It’s a cycle. They’re
all reliable players. No one gets dropped, otherwise you get constant controversies that do damage to the team.”
Those were the words of Gian Piero Gasperiniabout possible changes to his starting XI after two physically and mentally draining matches against Atalanta and Fenerbaçhe. One of the positions sure to see a change is in the midfield, where Manu Koné will be replaced by Niccoló Pisilli after he came off with a minor issue on Thursday. The good new is though that Koné is fit enough to make the bench. As is Lorenzo Pellegrini for the first time since April.
Many people expect Paulo Dybala to be given a breather, but Gasperini seemed to shoot down that nation though.
“If he’s fit, he’ll always play, without a doubt. You rest when you’re tired. If he’s fit, would you send him to bed? You can never know when someone’s going to get injured, but if you’re fit, you play. If you need a rest, it’s only right you rest. That’s how we’ll handle it, on a case-by-case basis. The important thing is to try and make the most of each player’s best form. All matches are hard. It’s not as though playing against Torino is easier than playing against anyone else. We’ll be up against a determined team who will want to give their best performance and, in any competition, if you’re not on top form, you can’t assume you’ll win matches. We’ll have to play a great game tomorrow to win in Turin because it’s a tough fixture and we need to be at our best. Each time, we’ll have to put the previous match behind us. We need to be set for Torino.”
Gasperini was also asked about Dybala possibly being joined by Santiago Castro in attack, but Gaperini’s response seems to indicate he doesn’t play on sitting Donyell Malen either.
“And then maybe Malen won’t play (laughs, ed.). Let’s go back to what we were saying earlier. Castro is an important player who we wanted. He’s doing well. We need to move away from this ‘starters versus substitutes’ mentality. There’s him, there’s Malen, there’s Mora, there’s [Matias] Soule. They’re all doing well. Castro has always come on, except for the last match in Turkey, and so has Mora. We’ll also have [Lorenzo] Pellegrini tomorrow. He’ll be travelling with us, and he’ll be in the squad. Perhaps, for the first time, we’ll all be here. [Emanuele] Lulli has a slight fever, so we’ll see how he is today but he’s feeling better. All 20 of these players, plus the goalkeepers, can be part of this team.”
Moving into the defense, Gasperini was asked if his defensive hierarchy could change given the performances of Leonardo Belardi off the bench. His response was telling to the way he sees his squad.
“Please stop with all this talk about hierarchies. It’s not fair on the players. Everyone is giving all they can. This desire to construct a hierarchy makes no sense and isn’t beneficial to the team. [Daniele] Ghilardi has improved, [Konstantinos] Koulierakis is an important option. We already knew about Balerdi. He’s a player who achieved something remarkable at Marseille. He’s not a little boy. As soon as he arrived, we knew we’d brought in a great player. When we start talking about hierarchies, saying one player plays and another doesn’t and feels frustrated, that’s not how it works in teams competing in the Champions League. There are several regular starters without the need to promote one and drop another. It always becomes a controversial issue that does no good.”
And he was similarly non-committal when asked about Koulierakis.
“I don’t know. He’s fit and I’m very please with what he’s doing. Don’t you want to see [Mario] Hermoso? [Evan] Ndicka? There’s always someone who’s left out, but I can assure you that Roma will have 16 players in Turin too. Unfortunately, some won’t play, but they may feature in a later match.”
Lastly, the one position where we could also see a change is at right-wing back where Lulli is dealing with a minor illness and Nahuel Molina has yet to start a match. Gasperini was asked about Molina and Wesley in the presser as well.
“The best. Both are doing well. Wesley took a nasty knock to the knee the other day, which affected him towards the end, but they’re very strong athletes and they’ll recover in two days, let alone four. Molina arrived at the end of August. He’s been with us for 15 days and missed our pre-season training, but I can see him improving. He, like De Roon and the other new signings, is a bit behind. The others have been here since 13 July.”
Given what Gasperini said during his presser and the projections made in various publications in Italy, we aren’t expecting many changes to the XI from Thursday in Turkiye. Pisilli and Molina seem like the obvious choices. But, Lulli is still being mentioned to start. The other players be given a shout to start are Rodrigo Mora and Belardi. However, most publications this morning are leaning toward Matías Soulé and Gianluca Mancini.
Given that, Roma’s XI should look something like this:
ROMA (3-4-1-2): Svilar; Mancini, Ndicka, Hermoso; Molina, Cristante, Pisilli, Wesley; Soulé; Dybala, Malen.
