In the build-up to this match, we touted today’s fixture in Friuli against relegation-dwelling Udinese as a classic trap game. You know the type: the proverbial cock of the walk, in this case Gian Piero Gasperini’s high-flying Roma side, comes up against a bottom-feeder that, on paper, shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath. Rather than going all out, the supposedly superior club operates on cruise control, simply assuming that victory is theirs for the taking.
However, as we’ve seen many times
over the years, assumptions like these can quickly prove disastrous. A stray pass here or there, a shot clanging off the woodwork, a narrow offside call, and suddenly your highly-tuned attack runs aground. As if that weren’t bad enough, the killing blow usually comes when the opposition falls backward into a goal, often in the form of a lucky deflection off an unsuspecting defender or a lightweight shot slipping through the keeper’s gloves.
For a brief moment today, it seemed this fate might once again befall our beloved Roma. After a slow start (relative to their scorching form), Roma allayed any concerns in the 10th minute, when club captain Bryan Cristante notched his first goal of the season, heading home a cross from Wesley.
Still, one-goal leads are seldom safe, so when Roma proceeded to hit the woodwork twice in a matter of moments, Matías Soulé in the 28th minute and Donyell Malen in the 29th, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who moved closer to the edge of their seat.
But then something wonderful happened: Roma followed up those two near misses with three goals in a matter of six minutes, as Rodrigo Mora, Donyell Malen and Evan Ndicka pushed the lead to an incredible 4-0 heading into the break.
Roma would relent a bit in the second half, conceding two goals to Udinese, but a thumping stoppage-time header from Daniele Ghilardi pushed the final tally to 5-2, giving the Giallorossi an ideal sendoff for Tuesday’s trip to Manchester.
