Roma, Monday to forget: defeat and fifth place

In Monday’s post-match valid for the twenty-third day of Serie A, Roma was defeated 1-0 in Udine and thus slipped to fifth place in the standings, surpassed by Juventus, which ran away in Parma on Sunday evening with a clear 4-1. At the Bluenergy Stadium, it was Udinese who played the game from the very beginning: Atta and Ekkelenkamp attempted to finish from distance, but found an alert Svilar. The guests struggled to make themselves dangerous and did so only with a Soulé free kick before halftime.

Andrea Gussoni

The game was then decided early in the second half, again on a spot kick: in the 49th minute Ekkelenkamp let off a right-footed shot that, deflected by Malen, mocked Svilar for 1-0. Gasperini tried to change the inertia of the match with a series of substitutions (Venturino, Ghilardi, Pisilli, Vaz and Tsimikas) but his Roma could not find the right breakthrough.

In the final 90 minutes, Cristante bagged what would have been the equalizer with a header, but the goal was disallowed for offside by Tsimikas, formerly of Liverpool, who had provided the assist. On the last play it was Okoye who rose to the occasion, preventing a resounding own goal by Kabasele. The match thus ended 1-0, with Udinese thus joining Lazio on 32 points in ninth place.

Gian Piero Gasperini tried to hide disappointment: “What could we do better? We lacked a bit’of precision, then there’s been a bit of bad luck both in the final and on the goal taken. However, this is a team that also comes out of these matches with its head held high always improving. The game was very closed. Even for them it was difficult to attack: they made just a couple of shots from distance”.

Inevitable a market question: “Now it is closed. We certainly didn&#8217t think we would find these difficulties in putting in the players we were looking for. However, I am very happy that Malen and Zaragoza have arrived. There are also many very young people like Robino Vaz and Venturino whom we cannot ask to be ready yet. We will work on it”.