Roma hope to emulate Juventus tonight against Shakhtar
▶ Italian side bid to overturn 2-1 first-leg deficit at home by using rival’s success as inspiration
Around Roma, you express admiration for Juventus through gritted teeth. Regional rivalry, a catalogue of contested transfers of players heading north, along with decades of grudges and refereeing conspiracy theories, make the Roma-Juve enmity fierce and raw.
So very few romanisti would have been openly cheering for the Italian champions as they fought back from behind to oust Tottenham Hotspur from the Uefa Champions League last week.
Yet there was quiet respect for their resolute spirit. That, Roma manager Eusebio di Francesco declared, should be the example Roma follow tonight as they seek to reverse a 2-1 deficit from the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie at home to Shakhtar Donetsk.
“Juventus came out and showed their pedigree under pressure. They showed a really impressive character,” Di Francesco said. “It was a victory with a ‘die hard’ mentality. It’s an approach you hope Italian football tends to have, and I hope my team has it as much as anybody.”
Quite a battle cry, with its appeals to patriotism.
The differences between Juve in London and Roma now is that the club from the capital have 90 minutes to claw back the tie. Juve were 3-2 down with less than half an hour to go. Roma’s 90 minutes are at home.
“We need the supporters to be our 12th man,” said Di Francesco, aware that, although over 40,000 tickets had been sold by the weekend, there has been some grumbling from fan groups about the elevated prices for what is a portentous fixture.
Portentous because Roma have a glass ceiling to shatter. The club have not reached a European Cup quarter-final for a decade, as their three previous last-16 ties finished with the Italians second best to Arsenal, Real Madrid and Shakhtar themselves back in 2011.
Unlike Juve, Roma are not Champions League experts. Last season’s elimination to Porto in the August play-off round was a heavy blow to club’s esteem.
Set next to that, the fact they topped arguably the most sturdy pool in the 2017/18 group stage, taking four points from Chelsea, represented real progress.
Di Francesco said they have a healthy momentum. Since the defeat to Shakhtar in Kharkiv three weeks ago, Roma bounced back from a home loss to AC Milan with a surprise 4-2 win at the then Serie A leaders Napoli. They followed that with Saturday’s 3-0 victory over Torino, an emphatic scoreline achieved without the suspended Edin Dzeko – the club’s leading marksman – who will return to spearhead the attack tonight.
“I want the Napoli match to be our turning point for the rest of the season,” said Di Francesco, whose side are third in the table – and three points clear of local rivals Lazio – thanks to a run of five wins in their past six league outings.
A 1-0 win would be enough against Shakhtar. Roma goalkeeper Alisson Becker marked at the weekend his 50th competitive match for Roma, a milestone he was pleased to pass without conceding.
Alisson, who can expect to be standing between the posts for Brazil come the World Cup, has impressively assumed the responsibility of marshalling Roma’s penalty area and being the effective first point of their counter-attacks since taking over the No 1 spot last summer from Wojciech Szczesny.
He has burnished his reputation in European games this term, and Roma owe him for the fact they are in catching-up distance to Shakhtar in this tie.
He can expect to be worked. Alisson has in the past few days put time into further studying the free-kick technique of the Ukrainian team’s mercurial striker Fred.
Roma’s keeper and Shakhtar’s dead-ball specialist, who struck a fabulous winner over the Roma wall, are international colleagues and former club mates at Internacional of Porto Alegre, although evidently not so close that one cannot still surprise the other.
Di Francesco said Roma lost some of their poise in Kharkiv.
“We can be a bit rushed, and that stops us making the most of our potential,” the manager said. “But I feel sure we can cause them some problems.”
It was a victory with a ‘die hard’ mentality. It’s an approach you hope Italian football tends to have, and I hope my team has it as much as anybody EUSEBIO DI FRANCESCO Roma manager, on matching Juventus’ tenacity