Brian Glanville in The Times
Roman gladiators
Ominously for Manchester United, Roma are finding form at the right time and have a rejuvenated striker in Francesco Totti
Brian Glanville
How hard it is to make any sense of Roma’s form this year. Their highly surprising, but fully deserved, 2-0 win in Lyon last week was arguably the only clear and uncontroversial victory of the whole round. They took their goals wonderfully well, the first neatly headed by the emblematic Francesco Totti, the second the result of a superb solo by the left-sided Brazilian midfielder Mancini, who rounded off his run with a splendid left-footed drive. And when Lyon threatened to come back into the game, they found themselves denied by the giant 27-year-old Brazilian goalkeeper, Doni, who brought off a point-blank save from the former Arsenal forward, Sylvain Wiltord, and followed that by flying across his goal to turn round the post a fierce drive by the Brazil international Juninho.
The previous weekend, Roma could do no better than gain a shaky 1-1 draw on the ground of the bottom-placed Serie A club, Ascoli, their equaliser from the Swedish winger Christian Wilhelmsson coming as late as the 85th minute.
It is arguable that so far as the Italian championship is concerned, Roma have simply taken their eye off the ball. Though they are impregnable in second place and are therefore all but sure to qualify for the next Champions League, they have drifted 16 points behind the leaders, Internazionale, who, ironically enough, have just been knocked out of the competition by Valencia.
Until the Christmas break, Roma did appear to have some chance of overhauling Inter, but that chance has not only well and truly gone but of late has hardly been pursued.
Away form in the Champions League has scarcely been better than in domestic competition. Not since October 18 last year, when Roma won in Greece at Olympiakos, had they triumphed away from home. And not since December 20 have they recorded an away victory in Serie A, that one being 2-1 at Torino. In that period, away from home, Roma have lost one match and drawn four.
Before the goalless draw at the Olympic Stadium in Rome against Lyon, they had just lost 1-0 away to little Empoli, the club that their manager, Luciano Spalletti, had coached for four seasons, bringing them all the way up in just three years from C1, the third division, to Serie A. Another irony, while he was in charge at Empoli, Spalletti encouraged the career of Vincenzo Montella, who, in mid-season, left to go on loan to Fulham because Spalletti’s use of Totti as a sole striker meant that there was no longer a regular place for him.
Totti, 30, is beyond question the talisman of the team, having made his debut as long ago as March 1993, though he did not gain a regular place in the side until a couple of seasons later. Since then, the Rome-born Totti — though not infrequently at odds with the club, even threatening to leave for alleged lack of support on the field — has been the jewel in the crown. Arguably he has been the same for Italy, though his international record has been blemished by indiscipline.
He was sent off for spitting during the 2004 European Championships in Portugal. Two years before that, he was somewhat more contentiously expelled during the World Cup for a probably undeserved second yellow card playing against the hosts, South Korea, in Daejeon. Infuriated, Totti, by his own admission, went off and, with some help from teammates, smashed up the dressing room.
Essentially an attacking player, he had largely been used by club and country until this season as what the Italians call a trequartista, a three-quarter player, that is to say, operating just behind a spearhead. But this season, as a solitary striker, he has so far amassed no fewer than 16 league goals, which is one more than he got in the campionato all last season, in his 24 appearances.
Totti, of course, was a leading figure in Italy’s passage to the last World Cup final. Other Roma players in the victorious Italian team were the midfielders Simone Perrotta, who was actually born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, and the somewhat explosive 23-year-old Daniele De Rossi, born in Rome like Totti and sent off in the World Cup group stage for a particularly brutal foul against the United States. That offence confirmed the penchant of Italy managers for forgiving and quickly rehabilitating their ill-disciplined players, because it did not prevent him coming on in the final against France and scoring in the penalty shootout.
The Roma defence is one of the best in the league, equal with Inter’s having conceded only 21 goals, while the team has scored 52. The best defence belongs to Roma’s eternal rivals, Lazio, who have given away just 19 goals.
Apart from the giant Doni, Roma have plenty of experienced talent to choose from in defence. The 24-year-old France international Philippe Mexes, who had a troubled transfer from Auxerre, has just returned from injury and has shown resilient form, even managing to score a league goal.
Matteo Ferrari, who played just eight Premiership games during an uneasy season at Everton, is back in Rome and is able to operate either in central defence or at full-back. The 26-year-old Romania international, Cristian Chivu, is similarly versatile, while another Italian defender who had a brief, unhappy eight-game spell at Chelsea, Christian Panucci, is playing at left-back.
What we do know is that Roma will be giving their all in the two matches against Manchester United, while they can afford to take their foot off the accelerator and even rest key players when it comes to the title race. Significantly, perhaps, both Mancini and De Rossi came on only as 59th-minute substitutes in the Ascoli game that preceded the surprise at Lyon.
So can Manchester United do better than Lyon? Don’t count on it, not least when they made such embarrassingly heavy weather of their two meagre 1-0 victories over Lille, a team that lags hopelessly far adrift of Lyon in the French championship.
All United were good for in Lens was that Ryan Giggs goal which, however technically legitimate, still raised memories of Stephen Potter’s once celebrated book Gamesmanship, the art of winning without actually cheating. Even the eulogised Cristiano Ronaldo was firing blanks that night.
And at Old Trafford, in the return, Lille for all their modest means, almost scored twice. This time, for the solitary winning goal, United had to rely on the indestructible Swede Henrik Larsson, who shortly, of course will be homeward bound.
United’s European record in recent seasons has been moderate to a degree. At present, the parts are manifestly superior to the whole, and alas, there is no Roy Keane to galvanise, exhort and inspire.
Let us not be too hard on United. This has so far been a depressingly mediocre European tournament. Former big guns are now firing blanks. Arsenal have crumbled; Barcelona are in decline, in common with Bayern Munich; Real Madrid are in deep crisis. Liverpool and Chelsea have gone through, but each owes so much in this first round of knockouts to abysmal goalkeeping errors.
Ominously for United, Roma have at last begun winning away: and just when it really matters.
Euro pedigree
Roma:
League position 2nd
European Cup best finalists
CL 2006-7 P8 W4 D2 L2 F10 A4
Top scorer Francesco Totti (4)
Man United:
League position 1st
European Cup best Winners (2)
CL 2006-7 P8 W6 D0 L2 F12 A5
Top scorer Louis Saha (4)
