How was that for a mood-booster at the start of the season?
Roma raced to the top of the Serie A standings after matchday one with a convincing victory over Fiorentina on Monday night. A hat trick from Donyell Malen, with each goal assisted by Paulo Dybala, set Roma on their way to all three points. Niccolò Pisilli put the finishing touches on the 4-0 win late on. Roma could not have made much more of a statement at the start of the season than that.
Fiorentina have been tipped by some as dark horses
this season after their array of summer signings, but bigger doesn’t always equal better in the transfer market. Roma remember that themselves from 2018.
Monday’s opponents may yet find their form in the coming weeks. It can’t be much worse for them than last season, after all. So perhaps it was a good time for Roma to play this new-look Viola side, which hadn’t quite gelled yet.
There were no such concerns from Gian Piero Gasperini’s men. Six of the starting XI had also started the final game of last season, when Roma secured Champions League football at long last. This was a case of picking up from where they left off.
Only two new faces appeared in the starting lineup. Rodrigo Mora, the gifted attacking midfielder recently brought in from Porto in what has been billed as a big deal, was joined by academy graduate Emanuele Lulli, who made his debut.
It took less than half an hour for Roma to take the lead, with Malen opening his account for the season – the first time Roma’s top scorer from the previous season scored their first goal of the new one since Henrikh Mkhitaryan in 2021 (league top scorer only) or Edin Džeko in 2018 (all competitions).
Malen completed his treble in the second half, becoming the first Roma player to score a hat trick on the opening day since Pedro Manfredini way back in 1960.
By the time Pisilli made it four, Roma had the game wrapped up. Safe in the knowledge of their three points, it was the kind of game they could take a lot of confidence from.
There’s a lot you can learn from the first game of a season. In fact, it’s easy to fall into the trap of reading too much into it – I won’t be making any Scudetto shouts this soon, even from this perch.
But there are some safer takeaways from Roma’s season debut.
Dybalen Still Brings the Magic
That connection he has with Donyell Malen excites me. Right from the first time they set foot on the pitch together for Roma, you could tell they had something instinctive. We need to capitalize on that as often as possible.
That’s what I wrote of the Dybala and Malen partnership in our pre-season roundtable. You best believe I’m still excited.
Malen has the magic touch, we know that. The only question was whether he could carry his momentum over from last season, but on first sight, it seems he can.
Malen came to Roma with the bit between his teeth, eager to prove he could play as a centre-forward. He proved it emphatically with 15 goals last season. But, somehow, he didn’t quite prove it to his country. For some reason, he was largely overlooked for a striker’s berth at the World Cup, with Dutch boss Ronald Koeman preferring to use him on the wing, or, more commonly, not at all.
And so, Malen has returned to Rome with a fresh hunger to answer the question once and for all. Having Dybala by his side only boosts his hit rate.
The same player assisting all three goals of a teammate’s hat trick doesn’t happen often. It last occurred in Serie A in May 2021, in a game between Bologna and repeat victims Fiorentina.
Dybala was the architect of Roma’s opening goal. Dribbling in from the right, La Joya broke into the box and helped the ball trickle towards Malen.
The Dutchman’s composure was exceptional. A flick behind his standing foot helped him evade the last defender and get into a shooting position to put Roma 1-0 up.
Goal number two was more about the finisher. Dybala picked him out in space, before he charged ahead and blasted home – again with his left foot.
And the attacking partnership bore fruit again when Malen played a one-two with Dybala, who patiently picked out the right time to set up his colleague for his hat-trick clinching goal.
Their understanding together is intuitive. Each has played well for Roma without the other before, but put them next to one another and the magic happens.
More of the same, please.
Lulli Already Adds Value
You would have been hard pressed to find someone a few weeks ago predicting that Lulli would be on the teamsheet as a starter for Roma’s first game of the season.
Lulli caught the eye in pre-season, logging more minutes than some established first-teamers like Daniele Ghilardi, Neil El Aynaoui, Jan Ziółkowski and Manu Koné (although late returns from the World Cup didn’t help a couple of those).
He was the busiest of all newcomers to Roma’s first team over their friendlies, new signings included. Often, as these preparatory matches go on, youngsters like him are whittled away and sent back to the Primavera, but his presence persisted.
And once Nahuel Molina and Devyne Rensch were ruled out against Fiorentina, the door swung open for Lulli to make his competitive debut at right-back, with Wesley’s services once again required on the left.
It was a promising start to the 19-year-old’s senior career. He wasn’t in man-of-the-match territory, sure, but he didn’t look out of place either – and that’s sometimes as big a compliment as you can pay a youngster on their first appearance.
Lulli looked to get forward often. He evidently likes a stepover or two as he takes on opponents. Physically, he coped well enough to last the whole 90 minutes. Winning all four of his tackles, he was solid in duels. He could maybe sharpen up his crossing, but that will come.
Roma have needed depth at wing-back, hence the signing of Molina, but they might be unearthing an internal solution.Don’t expect Lulli to become a first-team regular just yet, but equally don’t be surprised if this isn’t his last start of the season.
He has enjoyed a meteoric ascent over the past couple of months. He was barely even on the radar for our annual U-23 countdown, more a sign of the strength in depth Roma have assembled at the younger end of the spectrum in their senior squad as anything inattentive to his potential.
But sometimes a chance comes out of the blue and you have to take it. In this instance, Lulli did.
Roma Can Grow Into Gasp-ball
It was substance over style last season that got Roma into the top four again. Hallmarks of Gasperini’s trademark style of play were hard to spot consistently. His best Atalanta teams suffocated opponents by dominating the pitch. Roma didn’t exactly play like that last season.
Any coach requires time to drill their tactics into a new set of players, but this win planted the seeds for Roma to grow into Gasp-ball. They played on the front foot from the get go, pushing on as much as they could and never taking their foot off the gas – even when they were comfortably ahead.
Yes, Fiorentina’s deficiencies played into Roma’s hands, but in terms of taking a game to an opponent, this was much closer to the real deal. It’s a building block for Roma to become a genuine Gasperini team. A blueprint is now in place. It’s up to the players and staff to ensure they can replicate it.
We saw wing-backs bombing on, the outer members of the back three stepping up, and Roma leaning on the force of their frontmen to do a job on Fiorentina. It worked convincingly.
Can Roma repeat that kind of performance against better teams? Or even more pessimistic ones than Fiorentina, who might sit back and be more stubborn? Only time will tell, but these tactics are beginning to evolve and it could unlock a whole new layer to this team.
