Sinners & Saints: Milan vs. Roma

As opposed to Roma’s win over Sampdoria, Sunday's match against Milan was a disappointment. Particularly with Atalanta still chugging along and winning games, wins are crucial for the Giallorossi if they expect to make the Champions League for next year.

Sinners

Davide Zappacosta

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This was Zappacosta’s first start for Roma, and it’s safe to say that if this is going to be his typical output, Roma will be looking for another right-back solution soon. A ridiculously poor pass from Zappacosta resulted in a goal by Ante Rebić, and a match that had seemed relatively in the balance turned into a Milan win.

It’s easy to sympathize for Zappacosta given that he is still relatively fresh off of his injury layoff, but mistakes like this one make me miss the days of Alessandro Florenzi in Rome even more than usual.

Paulo Fonseca

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Fonseca is a good manager, but even good managers have bad days at the office. Both Roma and Fonseca had no energy to respond to Rebić’s goal, and while the excessive heat might have played some role in that, Fonseca has to be getting wins right now. Fonseca’s style of football is often a very entertaining watch, but there was little fluidity or excitement in the way Roma played yesterday. That’s a major problem.

Perhaps both the players and the coach are still working out the kinks in this restarted season. Regardless, considering Roma’s place in the table, Fonseca needs to do better. No more slip-ups.

Lorenzo Pellegrini

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For one of the players that is supposedly seen as a key cog in Roma’s future, this was not a great game for Lorenzo Pellegrini. Picking up a yellow card early is bad; being invisible for your entire time on the pitch is worse. He was shown up even more by Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s performance, as the Armenian did put in the work and nearly got results. Add in the fact that Pellegrini is suspended for the next match, and this game was certainly a net negative for the Roman midfielder.

I’m personally a big believer in Pellegrini’s potential, but performances like these make me worry that he’s on the path to becoming Alberto Aquilani 2.0. I really hope that doesn’t happen.

Saints

It is my personal policy that losing 2-0 to Milan means that there weren’t any Giallorossi saints.