what’s my role

By: Greg Cimilluca

I don’t often get moved to write. Well, wait – I take that back. I OFTEN get moved to write, I just generally don’t do it. I usually try to leave it to the podcast (LaMagicast) for my airing of grievances/joys/analysis. I have however, hit a wall that requires me to put pen to paper. I hope it is worth your time.

What I have learned is, the number of times a player, coach and/or organizational head is quoted in any of the many media outlets that the team needs to play with more consistency is not in short supply. What I don’t think has been said enough is what type of consistency they are referring to.

To clarify things, let’s take a look at the word itself:

con-sist-en-cy (/kənˈsistənsē/) noun:

1. Agreement or logical coherence among things or parts
2. Correspondence among related aspects; compatibility
3. Reliability or uniformity of successive results or events

I am willing to wager most are referring to definition 3. All people want is to see them play in a manner that produces results in kind. The converse of that, states they are a world-beater one weekend and then lose to a minnow the next (aka, “The Roma way”).

The larger point is being missed, however. Are they not trying as hard? Are they not as good as we thought? Do they get lucky/unlucky on a week-to-week basis? By and large the answer is NO. I believe they want to and are on the pitch trying to beat Pescara. Palermo. Chievo. Milan. Juventus. In an even manner.

What causes the issue then? How can they swing SO high to SO low SO quickly?

Easy. The answer is (/kənˈsistənsē/).

But I believe it is more about definition numbers 1 and 2. Roles are important in sports. Crucial even. Strategies come and go. Formations come and go – but having a well-defined role on a squad is essential for consistency. Roma, as a team, lack this.

I am not saying that players have the right to be inflexible. Quite the contrary. Again, let’s look at the converse scenario. Today’s Roma represents the problem whereas say, Spalletti’s Roma represents the converse. Regardless of the formation chosen, week-to-week the players knew what they were responsible for. It is no surprise that when watching them that it seemed like they had been playing their entire careers together. It simply just worked. Yes they had blackouts (including losing to lesser teams). Yes they lost their way in games. But it was never down to consistency; at least not THAT consistency. The one I choose to speak of.

Fine – forget Roma. Is Iniesta asked to be a different type of player week to week? Is Ronaldo? They are superstars so they shouldn’t count? Ok fine – let’s bring it back to our beloved Roma.

“Why is it that Daniele De Rossi plays so well for gli Azzurri and can’t quite replicate it for Roma (like he used to)?”. I used to think the answer to this was based around the TYPE of role he played for nazionale vs. club in recent years. But at the end of the day – it is the same – it just comes down to Prandelli has given him a role since he took over and DDR has done it with aplomb.

It does not change.

He knows what is expected (wait for iiiiiit) not only of himself but also of his teammates on the pitch in all 3 phases. I would even go so far as to say that even applies to when he was slotted in at CB to a degree. Obviously some things change there but I think overall the mantra closely resembles what his marching orders tend to be. Again – it does not change. Months off from International duty and he will step on the pitch and immediately knows what his role is. That is incredibly essential for success.

Now let’s even take it to how things have gone the last couple of years in the midfield area again (while issues persist everywhere this phase needs it the most work). I think most of us would agree that Miralem Pjanic is a very very good footballer. He has been a valuable member of the team but at the same time I find it hard to believe we have scratched the surface of getting the most out of him. Regista, Trequartista, LWF, WMF, CMF, DMF … I like tactical flexibility but that is pushing it a bit. There has been no…what’s the word.. ah yes, consistency.

Injuries and squad depth play a part. I am not unaware of that situation and at times players are forced to play out of position. I get that. I do. But if we remove sports and think about our own professional careers (of which it is becoming increasingly more obvious that writing is not mine), imagine being a writer and coming into work and being asked to be a developer/programmer. Now imagine the reverse. Now imagine you have to be the accountant. Are there those that can fill all of those shoes? Sure. But in life as in football they are few and far between – and even in greater gaps to find those that do it successfully.

Roles count

To the individual and to the whole team concept, they count. Players need to understand their part to see where they fit in to the whole. Otherwise it is difficult to grasp why it is that they have to do what they are doing. DDR needs to know what Pjanic’s role is and vice versa. So they can see how they are to work together. And they need repetitions. Another sports staple that is crucial for success. They need to be in those roles practice after practice-game after game. That is why the mercato is so important. A mid-fielder or defender or striker can’t just be any MF/DEF/FWD – they must be the type that is needed for the team. That can, how do I say this.. fill a role! To quote the late Herb Brooks (USA Hockey Coach), “I’m not looking for the best players…I’m looking for the right ones.”

It’s not that I don’t think this isn’t being communicated. But it is changed too frequently and they have to re-up each week to a new role and new roles for their teammates. No, I do not think that the gap is too far but when you are trying to get consistent results, you need consistent play. And to get that, you need consistent roles.

Roles count. Clearly defined, Consistently performed roles.

(If all else fails, we should try this)

Find us on twitter:
Thomas (@iprimapunta)
Greg (@gregc9)
Alex (@AlexanderOslo)

We’re back after only two weeks and two games played; Pescara and Siena.  Thomas and Greg provide some fresh thoughts on the big topics Alex discussed with Lee and James two weeks ago and much more!

On the menu:

Siena & Pescara – tactics and formation.

La Magicast prefer Mazzarri over Allegri. Why?

– Keep on scoring and drive up that price, Osvaldo… and we’ll get you to a place where you can smile

– Bring back Borriello!

And Thomas wrote this about De Rossi on his blog Maledetta Primavera, hear him explain it.

Dessert: Twitter and Facebook questions from our listeners!

[This piece was inspired by Giancarlo Rinaldi’s newly released e-book ’20 Great Italian Games’, available on Amazon for the uber reasonable price of USD $2.99 – you’d be mad not to check it out.]

AS Roma 2, Sporting Clube de Portugal 1
Stadio Olimpico, Rome, October 23 2007

By: Enzo Giordani

A twitter account called ‘Half Scarf Twat’ recently featured one of my Scarves on Statues photographs – the one of Gandhi outside the Wellington Railway Station. The modus operandi of this self-identified ‘twat’ being to name and shame plastic fans who aren’t supporting their teams properly. According to him, “Half and Half Scarves are WRONG. They are the evil of today’s game. Support YOUR team!” So much anger…

I’m extremely proud of my half scarf. It is amongst my most prized possessions because it commemorates my favourite game of football of all time, the first AS Roma game I ever saw live and in person in my life – our 2007 group stage Champions League match vs Sporting Lisbon at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.

In the football fan’s bible, Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby lists the conditions that must all be met before a game of football from his childhood is deemed “really, truly memorable”.

“I had to go with my dad; we had to eat lunch in the chip shop (sitting down, no sharing of tables); we had to have seats in the Upper West Stand (the West Stand because you can see down the players’ tunnel from there and so can greet the arrival of the team on the pitch before anyone in the ground) between the half-way line and the North Bank; Arsenal had to play well and win by two clear goals; the stadium had to be full, or nearly full, which usually implied an opposing team of some significance; the game had to be filmed, by ITV for ‘The Big Match’ on Sunday afternoon rather than by the BBC for ‘Match of the Day’ (I liked the anticipation, I guess); and Dad had to be wearing warm clothes. He often traveled over from France without an over-coat, forgetting that his Saturday afternoon was likely to be spent in sub-zero temperatures, and his discomfort was so violent that I felt guilty insisting that we stayed right until the final whistle.”

A very worthy set of criteria indeed in my eyes and these factors were all more or less there for me at this game with a few minor adjustments.

My father died in 1979 when I was just 3 years old so I never really got a chance to get to know my Italian side. I discovered calcio in the 1990s partly thanks to ESPN showing Serie A in New Zealand at the time, and I fell in love with AS Roma as a matter of course, but what I knew about Italy then had only come second or third hand. When I went on my voyage of discovery in 2007, it was my chance to explore my roots and soak it all in for myself.

Experiencing a Roma game was top of my list of must-dos. When people arrive in Rome for the first time, their natural inclination might be to head straight for the Coliseum, or the Trevi Fountain. Mine was to make straight for the Roma shop in Piazza Colonna and snap up tickets for two games. Roma vs Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League and Roma vs Lazio in Serie A a week or so later.

My thoroughly kiwi mother, having watched me grow up, always a little bit different from the other kids, not really fitting in, wanted to be with me on this trip and be part of my journey. She wanted to experience what I experienced and she was keen to come along to a game and see what all the calcio fuss was about. We thought the derby might be a bit dangerous so the Sporting game was selected for this purpose.

On the day of the game we purchased train tickets and hit the tracks, arriving at Roma Centrale Termini from our Latina base with plenty of time to kill. We didn’t eat lunch in the chip shop – my Italian relatives never would have let us live that down. New Zealand was famous to them for two things – the All Black haka and fish and chips. One of their favourite things to do was screech “FEESH AND CHEEPS!” at us and burst into hysterics. I didn’t have the heart to break it to them that in New Zealand it’s actually “fush und chups”. So no chups for us, but it wasn’t the end of the world. We instead had pizza in the pizza capital of the known universe.

After a short taxi ride along the Lungotevere Flaminio, we walked across the river via the Ponte Duca D’Aosta with thousands of other fans, past all the kiosks selling scarves, hats and ultras memorabilia, though the gates, across the Foro Italico and into the famous stadium where New Zealand’s own Peter Snell won gold at the 1960 Olympic Games. We sat in the Tribuna Tevere, on the side of the stadium closest to the Tiber, between the half way line and the Curva Sud, so we had a great view of most of the excitement – both on the pitch and in the crowd. The magnificent crowd.

Focussing on the game was nearly impossible. I had to fight very hard with myself not to spend the entire time gaping open mouthed at the ultras. The Curva Sud was full of people, passion and choreography as you would expect in a game versus the champions of Portugal. The songs, the flares and the flags – it’s a feast of sight and sound that stays with you for the rest of your life.

We did however manage to tear our wide kiwi eyes from the fans and watch the game from time to time, and in terms of the emotional rollercoaster you get from a perfect football match, we got to feel it all.

The one thing I must disagree with Mr Hornby on is I place more value on a close game than he appears to and so winning by one clear goal is for me more satisfying than one of his soppy two goal victories, even if it doesn’t always seem that way at the time. You get to experience a fuller range of passions and there is nothing like the thrill of ecstasy that comes so soon after the depths of despair. You tend to appreciate things more when they don’t come easy. A late winner is the ultimate football experience.

But first there was the relief that floods through you after the tension that has built up over the months leading up to an experience like this, is released by an opening goal for your team, in this instance delivered through a header from Brazilian defensive rock Juan. The frustration of conceding almost straight after that was also a necessary element of our story, the agony before the ecstasy – how quintessentially Roma. The desperation and despair that came along with the prospect of only taking a point from the game was real. With Manchester United also in our group, it might as well have been a death sentence.

Then, in the 69^th minute, just when we thought it was all starting to slip away, super-sub Mirko Vucinic gathered in a pass from Marco Cassetti a few metres out from the left hand corner of the penalty area, right below where we were sitting. He drove forward and in the process of shaking off his first defender he found himself right on the goal line, still only just inside the box. He looked to have blown it but then he drove along the goal line, somehow jinked slightly back inside around another defender on the edge of the 6 yard box and in the same movement, from an impossible angle, floated an inch perfect shot that dissected the goalkeeper’s outstretched hand and the inside post. It was the best goal I’ve ever seen in my life and never mind ‘The Big Match’ on Sunday, when we got back to New Zealand a month later it was still being replayed over and over again on ESPN.

My mum missed this wonder strike because she was using the bathroom at the time, a fact I will probably never cease reminding her of because it was unforgivable, but at least she was warm enough to never once suggest leaving early and as a result, I got to hear ‘Grazie Roma’, the song played over the stadium PA after every Roma home victory, in its full glory, without Tommy Smyth or Janusz Michallik talking over the top of it about some meaningless statistic. There is no other feeling like it.

The only slight dampener on the evening was Totti getting injured early in the game meaning I only got to see a limited amount of my all-time favourite player, but I’m not complaining, I still got to see him play half an hour longer than most people get to.

Not even the bus driver getting lost on the way back to the Termini could inflict the slightest dent to our spirits. Watching him ask for directions, only for half the bus to yell “DESTRO!” (right) while the other half yelled “SINISTRA!” (left) as he jerked around making up his mind who to believe only added to the Romanesqueness of the occasion. We didn’t miss the train back to Latina because that was an hour late too – nothing but another important part of my re-education on the quirks of life in the best place in the world.

The second AS Roma game I ever saw live and in person was, as alluded to earlier, the Derby della Capitale, won by Roma 3-2. Some people in my shoes might have chosen that as their favourite game. But nothing can beat one’s first time, and I’m pretty sure nothing ever will.

Find us on twitter:
James (@ilroadrunner)
Lee (@Lee_R1989)
Alex (@AlexanderOslo)

Big win against Inter, and Roma are again ready for a Coppa Italia final (it’s been a while since we used to dance with Inter in that tournament).

Take a look at this picture and you know what else to expect from this pod:

In public, Osvaldo still has the faith of coach Aurelio Andreazzoli thanks to his excellent goalscoring form earlier this season. “He’s a great player. A striker’s role is unique, and when a striker doesn’t score he always finds it difficult to find the right balance”, Andreazzoli said before the Torino game. “Let’s not forget, however, that if we look at the scoring charts or if we look at his form until December, there were few people who were not enthusiastic. They weren’t disappointed or against Osvaldo, but they were enthusiastic”.

And the coach is right: with 10 goals in 14 games at the end of 2012, Osvaldo had been receiving well-deserved plaudits. Since then though, the goals have dried up. After scoring in the first game back following the winter break, the striker had only scored once (against Bologna in January) until his header last weekend.

The problem has not so much been that Osvaldo has not been finding the net, but rather his attitude both on and off the pitch. It’s a problem that he freely admits he has, telling La Repubblica in December that “I have a shit personality. I like being this way, but I’m not the only one to make mistakes”, before adding to Sportweek last month that “maybe I’ve had the wrong attitude on some occasions, which hasn’t helped me”.

Osvaldo is not the only player with such an attitude – far from it. But the Argentine-born striker has often dealt with it in the wrong way. “I’m better than you – we’re not at River here, when I talk to you then you listen”, he is said to have told Erik Lamela in the Stadio Friuli dressing room in November 2011. Whatever it was that he said, and whatever the reaction from Lamela, Osvaldo then hit (or slapped) his team-mate. Fast forward to October 2012, and Osvaldo once again took issue with Lamela on the pitch against Juventus and then afterwards in the dressing room.

Against Sampdoria in Andreazzoli’s first game, Osvaldo insisted that he take a second half penalty instead of Francesco Totti before meekly missing it. A confrontation with a Romanista at the airport followed, and Osvaldo is reported to have had to be restrained by Roberto Muzzi and Simone Beccaccioli. Then most recently, another there was episode at Trigoria between Osvaldo and Nicolas Burdisso. And I haven’t even got to his ridiculous red card record, most of which are for acts of stupidity and petulance.

Now, of course no club has a completely and perennially rosy atmosphere in the dressing room, especially after a season such as Roma have had. And Osvaldo is far from the only player to have been confronted by a fan after a disappointing performance. But he is the common denominator – whether trouble finds him or he finds trouble, he has tended to be at the centre of controversy. At times he has also made Dimitar Berbatov look agile and lively with his attitude on the pitch; whether it is part of his demeanour or not, looking as though you are not trying (even if you are) will not endear you to fans during difficult spells in front of goal.

The question is whether the pros of Osvaldo when he is on his game are enough to outweigh the cons of an out of form, moody Osvaldo. He is a figure who divides opinion – fans tend to either laud him or use him as a scapegoat for Roma’s failings. Of course the truth is somewhere in the grey area in the middle of the hero/villain scale. But for all his faults, it is important to remember that he has still regularly found the net for Roma. With 24 goals in 51 games in all competitions, he has the ninth best goals-per-game ratio of any player with over 50 appearances in Roma’s history.

After sitting out the Coppa Italia semi final second leg against Inter for the final game of his ban for elbowing Carlos Matheu in the last 16, Osvaldo will have had time to reflect on his performance at the weekend. Having shown more enthusiasm and drive than he has for weeks, he capped a good performance with a well-taken header to put Roma ahead. As Andreazzoli pointed out after the game to deter any more rumours of frictions and factions in the dressing room, his team-mates all rushed to celebrate with him. That is the Osvaldo that we all want to see. More of the same against Pescara please.

For those that bleed Giallorosso, there is simply no other match like it. It will leave you with feelings like no other. The days following a victory are filled with ecstasy, those after a defeat is akin to a deep depression. It’s heated, passionate & emotional. It’s unique in so many ways and for so many reasons. It is of course, the Derby della Capitale.

By: Lee Roberts

Monday evening sees us go head to head with our country “cousins” in the 156th ‘Stracittadina’, and the first ever to be played on the first working day of the week. With both sides involved in the thick of the race for a place in Europe next season, this is arguably the most important derby in terms of league positions for a good few years. It will be 10 days shy of exactly 3 years since Totti’s infamous ‘pollice verso’, when Lazio were battling to avoid relegation and a 12th season in Serie B whilst Roma were fighting tooth and nail with Inter for the Scudetto. A Mirko Vucinic double that day made both of those possibilities look increasingly likely. Sadly, neither eventuality became a reality.

Fireworks on the pitch are guaranteed. However, this game is all about the supporters and what it means to them. I am lucky enough to have been to two (victorious) derbies. The build up is tense. Take the 910 from Termini to Piazza Mancini on a normal match day and you may encounter a bubbly group of the younger generation of tifosi chanting the customary Curva Sud songs at the back of the bus, waving their flags out of the window. Not on derby day. You are instead greeted with an eerily nervous silence. Everybody wants to win a derby, but nobody wants to lose one. It is that fear of losing that makes for the incredible tension that is felt in the atmosphere during the build up. It starts weeks before the game, and by the time it is match day it has reached boiling point. I asked a friend of mine in Rome, Jacopo to describe what the derby means as a Roman.

“When you are younger, you are completely frightened by this event and the absolute first thing to do is avoid defeat. Only God knows how terrible it is to be teased by your Laziali schoolmates (fortunately, they’re always fewer than giallorossi). Then, if the final result is a draw, the one who is happy is always the one who has scored last. Otherwise I wouldn’t remember Castroman’s goal as a shot in the heart, and Cassano’s equaliser at 89′ as a breathe of freedom. To win a derby is one of the most powerful feelings a Romanista can experience, and the more unfair, lucky and unexpected the victory is, the more you enjoy it.”

Two teams, two sides of the city, two different ways to conceive the Roman spirit. It’s us against them. It’s our team, Roma, who has the name, the colour and the symbol of the Eternal City, and their team, who has the name of the region and colours of Ancient Greece. We are the team who has more derby victories, the team who has won the first derby in history, the team who has won more Scudetti. E Basta.”

Unfortunately, the Tessera del Tifoso and increased security measures, such as playing the derby during the day rather than at night have taken away a bit of the spark from from the atmosphere of the derby. Both Curva’s are still prone to producing fantastic pre-match choreographies however, and the ‘banner tennis’ – insults being hurled back and forth on feet long white vinyl – is still very much part of the derby make up. The whistles from the tifosi when the opposition team’s lineup is being announced over the stadium tannoy is quite literally deafening, and it is almost impossible to hear the club anthem ‘Roma, Roma, Roma’ over the the hate filled derision of those in the Curva Nord. The strenuous emotion of the derby is enough to reduce some to tears, of both joy & happiness and distraught and delusion. I have witnessed a 20 something year old ragazza balling her eyes out, singing along deliriously to ‘Grazie Roma’ after the 1-0 victory in December 2009 courtesy Marco Cassetti’s late winner. The feeling of a derby is so strong, it really does get under your skin and turn you into an emotional wreck for the day!

The tension felt among the supporters is very quick to translate itself on to the pitch. Recent history tells us that the team that keeps their heads, wins the day. Lazio’s recent run 3 consecutive derby wins has coincided with Roma being reduced to 10 men in every one of them, and all have been relatively early dismissals. In the first derby of the 2010/11 season, Simon Kjaer saw red for a needless tug as last defender 7 minutes after the interval. It was double punishment, as the foul also resulted in a spot kick. The return derby that season saw us have to endure nearly an entire game with 10 men, when Maarten Stekelenburg received his marching orders in only the 7th minute of the game, again resulting in a penalty. This season Daniele De Rossi was dismissed in the 47th minute for lashing out at Mauri with his elbow (I know, we’d all be tempted to do the same). Roma’s last victory in March 2011 saw Lazio have 2 men shown red. Over the last 10 capital clashes there have been an incredible 14 red cards, over 1 a game.

With that in mind, there is good reason to feel confident with a man like Aurelio Andreazzoli at the helm. The new Mister has transferred a new air of tranquility to the side and a previously obvious tension has been lifted since his arrival. His influence and that tranquil feeling could well prove key on derby day. He’s made it clear that he would like to take the job on full time. A victory against our most bitter rivals would do his credentials no harm at all.

Forza Roma!

(Photo credit: Michael Steele/Getty Images)

I don’t want the giallorossi to qualify for Europe and I’ll tell you why.

By: Enzo Giordani

For the last few seasons Roma has had this malicious, psychopathic want to torment its fans, like a child torments a cat, by dangling European football in front of our faces. Watching us drool, revelling in our longing stares just so they can rip it away from us at the last second as we reach out with a hopeful paw to touch it. This process is repeated several times a year until we scuttle off to hide under a bed and sulk for the European summer. Then, if you please, we emerge hopeful once again in the autumn without a hint of suspicion that the process is about to be repeated. Oh how they laugh. Well, I’m not playing their game this time. Europe? Pfffffffttttttttt…

This is made so much worse when the only brand of European football left to pine for is the booby prize that is the Europa League. It’s not even like they are dangling a fresh piece of meat in front of our noses. It’s a stale, six month old kitty bickie. Enough is enough.

Looking at the ladder, all the teams have ten games left. 9 points is a fairly good rule of thumb as to the cusp of being in contention to catch a team ahead of you at this stage of the season. Roma can maybe still make the Champions League on that basis, but while picking up 7 points in ten games is very doable if you’ve only got one team to get past, it gets exponentially more difficult the more teams that have to drop points to let you in. Offset against that is the way the league has been tracking. The teams below the top 1 are pretty inconsistent and will drop points. The key question though is can Roma capitalise when they do? All the evidence so far says no. So the Eurpoa League has to be the only target, be it via the table or winning the Coppa Italia. But, really, why would we want it?

I get the Champions League – it’s about being the best of the best, but why would you care about being best of the rest? Big clubs aspire to the Champions League. The sort of clubs that aspire to and get excited about the Europa League are the ones who if they weren’t vying for Europe would be fighting to avoid the drop. I don’t mean to be snooty about it, but we are not ‘clubs like that’.

Italian clubs tend to underperform in this second tier comp and it is due to this that our UEFA coefficient has fallen so low that we have lost our fourth Champions League spot to Germany. But that’s not our fault. It’s genetic. It’s not in our psyche to care about lesser things. It’s all or nothing for us. You either go for glory or go home for a nice plate of mama’s pasta. This explains why at World Cups we tend to either exit at the group stage or go all the way to the final.

The money that may come in from television rights is short-term. We can earn more in the long run by missing out this time. If we qualify for European competition now we are just as likely to be cannon fodder as contenders and getting knocked out early would damage our brand in the eyes of prospective fans and players alike. Surely it’s better to keep our powder dry and turn up when we can take the continent by storm.

Stretching the squad thinly with multiple mid-week fixtures next year would hamper our ability to qualify for the Champions League the following season. We are still rebuilding and the key thing that needs to happen in a rebuilding phase is the building of combinations, getting people used to playing together, knowing where each other will be when a pass is made without the need to look for them. It takes years. Having to rotate the squad to avoid the fatigue associated with midweek fixtures will slow this process down considerably. As will travelling to far flung parts of Europe so we can pick up injuries on frozen swamps and dry old cow paddocks.

And while concentrating on the Europa League will compromise our ability to make the top three in Serie A, on the other hand concentrating on Serie A will almost certainly mean an early exit from the Europa League, which would render pointless qualifying for it in the first place.

It may help us keep squad members who want to play in Europe, or will it? Will the Europa League really satisfy them? If so, good riddance to players like that.

Nope, no Europe for us please Roma. I’m quite happy sitting over here with my back turned ignoring your sad attempts to call my name in an unnaturally high pitched voice while patting your lap like some kind of hysterical German folk dancer. I’m a football fan, not a Yorkshire Terrier. Whaaaat?? Is that a ball in your hand???

Totti. Andreazzoli. And Greg’s 40 th birtday!

Find us on twitter:
Greg (@Gregc9)
Julian (@JulianDM11)
Alex (@AlexanderOslo)

“We’re getting the band back together!”. That’s right folks, the original ‘not ready for primetime players’ are back! The people that gave birth to the awesome that is LA MAGICAST have reunited to bring you the latest edition of our famed (not really) AS Roma pod.

As referenced above we have Totti’s 225 and our thoughts of how we came to love our captain. Not to be outdone, we then tackle the coaching change and what exactly is it that is in Andreazzoli’s secret sauce to making this Roma squad tick – and much more!

It was great getting the original trio back together again and we all agreed that at the very least it should be no longer than 5 months before we do it again. I kid – I kid.

In the words of our mister… “Siamo La Roma”

There is also something more subtle about Andreazzoli’s management than that of either Zdenek Zeman or Luis Enrique; while his two predecessors both looked to attack first and defend later, Andreazzoli’s team is based on a solid foundation. The back three have been supported by Daniele De Rossi and a deeper-lying Miralem Pjanic in central midfield, and Federico Balzaretti and Vasilis Torosidis both provide cover on the wings. Torosidis is already putting in some impressive performances after just a few weeks in Serie A, and Ivan Piris’ transformation from a nervous full back thrown in at the deep end under Zeman into an increasingly dependable and versatile defender is also worthy of recognition.

Marquinhos in action against Torino

The stand out performer in defence though has unquestionably been Marquinhos. The Brazilian shone even in Zeman’s notoriously porous defence, showing a level headedness and awareness that belie his years. At just 18-years-old, Marquinhos has adjusted to Italian football with incredible speed thanks in particular to his positional sense, and is already being linked with moves to the likes of Manchester City and Barcelona. Given that Marquinhos only signed on loan for Roma last summer with an option to make the move permanent for just €3m (plus the €1.5m loan fee), it is quite some rise in a short space of time.

Alongside Marquinhos, the 26-year-old Leandro Castan has been putting in steady if not spectacular performances. Castan has all the physical attributes to succeed and, like Marquinhos, also likes to take the ball out of defence and start an attack single-handedly. Now returning from injury, it will be interesting to see how he fares in Andreazzoli’s three-man defence after playing in a back four under Zeman and at Corinthians. Meanwhile Nicolas Burdisso continues to be consistently inconsistent – while I admire his 100% commitment to the cause every week, you cannot help but fear that a costly mistake is moments away.
In addition to the above, another local boy made his mark on Sunday night when he headed home a Francesco Totti corner – Alessio Romagnoli. Eyebrows were raised at the start of the season when Zeman put his faith in him as his fourth choice centre half, as he was not only a class ’95 but had not even played a senior game for anyone before, let alone Roma. There is a substantial gap in quality between Serie A and the Primavera level, but the Anzio-born defender put in a fine performance against Genoa after only 10 minutes experience in Serie A prior to Sunday night.

Daniele De Rossi with Alessio Romagnoli

Is Romagnoli the future of Roma’s defence? Totti seems to think so, as he said after the Genoa game that “he will become one of the best central defenders in Roma’s recent history”. “He’s a serious guy, he won’t get big headed”, Bruno Conti added, and Romagnoli himself said that he isn’t worried about playing more regularly as “I have time, I’m young so I won’t make it a problem for myself”.

After so long complaining about defensive blunders and the lack of any visible improvement in the team’s defending, it’s a great relief finally to be able to say something positive about the defence. Of course it is still far from perfect – there were still serious errors both against Genoa and in Andreazzoli’s first game against Sampdoria. But finally we seem to be on the right path, and long may it continue.

The Roma players embracing eachother after the victory against Juventus. Foto: Alexander Fredriksen

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, I’m no great photographer but I feel these are worth a few as well.

By: Alexander Fredriksen

It’s only hours since I returned back home after a few days in Rome. Needless to say, It was one of those moments you will renember for the rest of your life.

Players warming up in front of Curva Sud. Foto: Alexander Fredriksen

Two legends of Calcio: Francesco Totti and Andrea Pirlo. Foto: Alexander Fredriksen

Roma – Juventus 2012. Foto: Alexander Fredriksen

Roma – Juventus 2012. Foto: Alexander Fredriksen

Roma – Juventus. Foto: Alexander Fredriksen