It has been a truly tumultuous start for José Mourinho‘s Roma this season in Serie A. The opening two league games saw them fail to pick up all six points. However, it was clear that the side struggled against AC Milan in their third game of the season, with the side unable to prevent Milan from progressing the ball into dangerous areas.
It appeared as if the side’s fortunes would improve after a 7-0 thrashing against Empoli; however, one draw and 4-1 loss to Genoa later, Roma’s results would lead to José Mourinho stating that this current season has been his worst start to a campaign in his entire career.
From an attacking perspective, Roma have one of the league’s best goalscoring records. However, their goal tally of 15 should be taken with a pinch of salt due to their 7-0 win against Empoli. From an xG perspective, Roma have had the seventh-best attack in the league this season.
However, from a goals-against perspective, the same cannot be said, with the side conceding 11 goals, which would place them in the bottom half of the division. From an xGA view, the side have conceded chances just over half of that at 6.55, with Roma having the fourth-best defence in the league from this perspective.
This scout report and tactical analysis will look to investigate Roma’s tactics that have contributed to their defensive frailties and provide reasons as to why the side have had an up-and-down start to the season.
The simple answer
In cases where sides concede a lot more goals than the value of their xGA suggests they should, it is customary to turn the focus towards the goalkeeper of the side in order to investigate whether or not this is the chink in the armour of the side. This is, unfortunately, the case for Rui Patrício, with the shot stopper’s save percentage of 70.5%, ranking him in the 42nd percentile of goalkeepers.
Furthermore, the keeper’s post-shot expected goals throughout the last calendar year have been –0.16, enough to rank him in the 17th percentile of keepers. In addition, as seen in the graphic, Patrício has faced 7.43 xG and let in 2.57 more goals than he should have. From this viewing, a large amount of Roma’s goalscoring troubles can be placed on the shoulders of the goalkeeper.
Additional weaknesses
While analysing Roma’s games and their numbers, the side is better defensively than the amount they have conceded and the league table suggest. However, several issues can still be observed from a defensive perspective, particularly the lack of cohesion between their first two lines of defence.
What is clear is that Roma are not conceding many chances a game or even conceding many costly chances. However, there are notable issues regarding their press and how adept they are at preventing the opposition from being able to progress the ball, particularly when the side look to press the opposition in a 5-3-2 formation. The main reason for this has been when the strikers time their pressure as well as their general positioning defensively.
On several occasions this season, Roma’s strikers look to close down opposing defenders, even when there is no chance of them applying meaningful pressure to challenge for the ball. This can be seen in the image below, where Romelu Lukaku chooses to advance and pressure the player in the backline.
One of the most critical pillars in defence is support, which requires players to make complementary movements that reduce space and restrict passing options for the opposition. There are two key issues in this current scenario. The first can be seen below, with Romelu Lukaku advancing forward even when the distance he has to cover is too large, and the second is the fact that Pellegrini shifts across to cover the space and the player on the left-hand side.
Due to Lukaku being a considerable distance away to apply any meaningful pressure and Pellegrini in a position where he would be unable to support Lukaku and advance with him, Roma are left in a position where they are unable to cover key spaces as well as key opposition players as one player is advancing forward whilst the other is shifting across to cover space.
The consequences of this can be seen below, as Genoa are able to progress the ball and create a 2v1 scenario against Pellegrini. Lukaku shifting instead of advancing would have left Roma in a more defensively stable, allowing them to avoid a 2v1 situation on their left-hand side.
The issues around the timing of pressure of the forwards and their general positioning in defence stem from the same factor. The strikers, at times, are too focused primarily on covering players in the opposition backline and not on other key risks that can affect the side, such as space.
The general positioning of their forwards was a notable issue in the game against AC Milan. In this particular game, Roma were up against a Milan side that looks to create central overloads. Roma’s strikers would continually adjust their positions in order to cover players in the backline even when the ball had progressed further up the pitch. This resulted in Roma being unable to mitigate the threat of Milan’s midfield overload adequately.
As seen in the example below, Belotti moves towards the player in the backline with the opposition’s left back on the ball rather than shift to his right to cover the space.
From this point on, the knock-on effect of Belloti’s positioning can be seen. By not shifting across and covering the space, the opposition left-back could drive into the space ahead of the midfield. This results in an increase in the midfield’s load, with Milan able to enjoy a 5v3 overload in the centre of the pitch.
Generally speaking, Roma’s strikers do not position themselves and angle their pressure well enough to prevent passes into the midfield, which can encourage passes as well as dribbles into the centre of the pitch. This can be seen in the example below, with El-Shaaraway moving toward the opposition ball carrier in order to prevent a pass to the opposition player behind him. However, by doing this, he opens up a passing lane for the opposition to access a player behind the midfield line.
The opposition can quickly advance and attack the backline from this point.
Roma’s attackers suffer from having misplaced priorities in covering players. Defence is an aspect of the game that requires constant risk assessment from all players involved, which should see them assess the position of the ball, the opposition players, their teammates, and the space around them.
Roma’s front two are seemingly always more focused on the position of players in the opposition backline and not on any other factors, which increases the burden of defending on their three midfielders. If we look at the previous example again, we can see how the distance between the two forwards prevents them from covering the two opposition midfielders.
As a result, Leandro Paredes and Houssem Aouar are forced to cover the two opposing players in this area of the pitch, which restricts their ability to cover the space around them and creates more space for the opposition to progress the ball. Roma’s positioning disadvantages them even when they have a 4v3 advantage on the ball.
The effects on the midfield.
The positioning of the strikers results in several harmful effects on the midfield line. This piece has already touched on how, in the Milan game, Roma’s midfield struggled to deal with Milan’s midfield overload.
In cases where the opposition does not necessarily look to overload the centre, the issues for the midfield manifest in different ways. This was the case in the Genoa game, where Roma’s midfield were responsible for covering too many opposition players.
This can be seen in the image below, with Roma defending further up the pitch. In this scenario, Lorenzo Pellegrini covers the opposition midfielder, with the two strikers on the edge of the box.
In this situation, the strikers would be able to adjust their positioning to prevent passes to opposing midfielders with their cover shadows whilst still being able to press the centre-backs. However, this responsibility of covering the opposing midfielders falls on the shoulders of Bryan Cristante and Lorenzo Pellegrini.
As a pass is played to the opposition left-back, Pellegrini has to shift to his left to engage the left-back. In this case, the distance between the opposition midfielder and the left-back is too large for Pellegrini to cover in time to be able to reach the midfielder before he plays a pass centrally or cover the space that would prevent central passes.
As a result, Genoa could easily progress the ball past the first two lines of Roma’s defence.
The same issue can be seen in the example below. In this instance, Cristante has oriented his position towards the opposition midfielder, and Romelu Lukaku neither presses the goalkeeper nor prevents a pass to the opposition right-back. In this instance, it is also essential to highlight the position of Lorenzo Pellegrini’s position.
The duties of the midfield line to cover the opposition midfielders and passes into the wide areas without assistance from the strikers result in Roma’s midfielders having to cover large distances to cover the ball carrier and other opposition players. This leaves them in a position where they cannot protect the centre and the space in front of their last line.
When their press has worked
Even though there have been issues regarding the cohesion between the actions of the first and second lines, there have been games this season where the first two lines have worked well to restrict passing lanes and protect critical spaces.
This was certainly the case in the side’s game against Torino, where Roma made some key changes regarding the structure and roles in their press. Rather than defending in a 5-3-2, Roma would use a 5-2-3, yielding several benefits.
In this instance, the right and left forwards would look to press the right and left centre-backs, which alleviated some of the pressing responsibility on Lukaku, who could orient his position to cover the opposition defensive midfielder.
The defensive responsibilities of their midfield two were also reduced due to the duties of their wing-backs, who would both look to advance further up the pitch to cover the opposition full-backs.
This would mean that Roma’s midfielders would not have to deal with the problem of trying to cover the opposition midfielders and passes to the full-backs out wide.
This would essentially mean that the side were more balanced in cases where the ball was played into the wide areas, which can be seen in the image below, with the opposition able to form good angles of press, with Roma able to cover these players without leaving the centre of the pitch vacated.
This particular scenario also shows one of the reasons why, despite the issues between the first two lines of defence in some of the games, Roma have still been able to prevent opposing teams from creating precious chances. As seen below, Roma have used the centre-backs in the backline to plug in the spaces between players in the midfield line.
All centre-backs in the backline look to step up and cover players who look to position themselves between the midfield and defensive line. In this scenario, Evan Ndicka advances forward to cover the opposition player and challenge for the ball. Roma’s centre-backs are exceptional at stepping up in time and giving opposing players little time and space on the ball before they attempt to win the ball.
Conclusion
Although there have been some issues in coordinating Roma’s first two lines of defence, alarm bells should not be ringing yet for José Mourinho and his Roma side generally.
However, as this tactical analysis has shown, the issues regarding the first two lines still allow the opposition to progress the ball quickly.
In addition, it may be time for Mourinho to give 24-year-old Mile Svilar a run of consistent games in goal as Patrício, over the last few years, has shown a consistent decline in form.
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