Few thoughts on the game:
- Going into the match, Roma were on an 8-game winning streak, with an aggregate score of 24-6! In addition to Spalletti having the luxury of a full squad to choose his first 11 from and the fact that we have not won on their turf since the year Obama was first elected as President!. Travelling to the capital with all of that in mind and you wouldn't fault any Inter fan of hoping to only avoid a beating and for some type of a miracle for us to win or even draw!
Then again, this is Roma we're talking about, and you never know which Roma will turn up or how good/bad they will play. There's always the thought in the back of your head that, as ever, they will somehow defy logic and shit the bed, and to some extent, they did.
- The game started as expected with the hosts pressing and looking for an early goal, Inter did well in absorbing the pressure and not make silly mistakes that would cost us dearly of the start, and that is something you always worry about with our team. In that respect, I believe Mancini did a good job in prepping the players mentally and having the right mind set going into it. Even Mancini himself, who has been quite emotional and visibly annoyed on the sidelines in our last few games, has looked calm and collected for the majority of the match where he faced his old rival. Ironically, he seemed to lose his shit when we scored! Almost as if he worried that our players would retreat and invite the opposition to pressure them as if we were 3 goals in the lead and not 1 goal up in a must-not-lose match for the Romans.
- The fact that we managed to score was brilliant and the ugly duo deserve huge credit for it. We had 6 total shots and only 2 of them were on target, talk about being clinical eh? Roma, on the other hand, had 16 shots with 6 on the target.
Yes, Roma are one of the most lethal attacking teams in Italy, with dangerous players all over the pitch to be concerned about, but we have managed to shut them down for the most part. Salah was being silenced by Nagatomo, which forced Roma to focus their efforts on the opposite side of the pitch where Perotti and El Shaarawy kept working, interchanging and doubling up, and we still managed to mostly deal with them. Spalletti opting not to start with Dzeko was a bizarre decision and an unexpected one in my opinion. He's been dreadful ever since he arrived and only managed to find form in the last couple of months where he only ever scored starting a match.
It is a shame that regardless of that, as soon as we scored, everything changed and the Inter players thought they had done enough to win the bloody match when it wasn't nearly finished! Not only did they retreat but whenever we somehow found ourselves in the opposite final third, the players just fucked about and deliberately slowed the tempo down when in reality there was a great chance to be taken advantage of because of how many Roman players were out of position.
We have to change that about our team. Is it fatigue? Immaturity (relatively young squad)? Mancini's bad management skills? Whatever it is, it has to be fixed.
The result was by no means bad but as some said, how we managed to throw away 3 points was heartbreaking. And no, not because Roma were always going to attack meant that they would surely score. How many times does a team go all out and not manage to score FIFA (PS) style? Something changed after we scored that made Roma believe they could salvage something and all they ever wanted was a draw (basing that on Dzeko not starting).
Still 8 matches left, however, it is by no means over.
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