THE WOLF'S DEN - Tana dei Lupi II

[maro]

Damn it. I've not watched the game, but I hope Galloppa hasn't done them a season-rescuing favour, irony of ironies that that might be.

[Lupa]

[maro]

I see Napoli's equaliser was clearly offside. No doubt Mazzari and De Laurentis will come out and acknowledge that what goes around comes around and while they've not had the rub of the green on other occasions tonight they did.

[RomaShield27]

Full match available for download in the , including a great HD torrent.

Zampa highlights:



11 minute highlights:



Great rigore/Curva Sud/Totti sub and post-game celebrations video from ForzaRoma here:



46,000 was the for the game, which I was wondering about, as there seemed to be a lot of empty seats. Very disappointing turnout. Clearly we here were not the only ones lacking enthusiasm for this one.

Did Philippe Mexes look like a man who is leaving Roma? He celebrated today as if he were in the Curva Sud himself, jumping up and down like a lunatic.

Totti was exceptional today. He may not have been exceptional in the pure sense of playing top-class football throughout, but I don't think I've seen any player ever play with such heart and raw desire to win a game of football before. He put his body on the line time and time again (a lot of time illegally backing in under a high ball it has to be said, but it all counts) and took a lot of punishment and a horrible kick in the face, and still fought on, and was magnificent at simply eating up the entire last period of the match in the corner, which the stupid burini cunts fell for.

It may not of been a classic, but that doesn't matter in the slightest. Today was about beating the lazie and saving our season by getting back in contention for 4th, and we done that, thanks to Totti. Today our hero has been redeemed, and he is man reborn. May we have many more years of it. Grazie Capitano. Forza Roma.

[maro]

I think Totti's also lost some weight - and it makes a big difference. I think he was too focused on bulking up. I think both he and DDR have lost some bulk and it has to be good for their game.

[p_maldini_3]

i hope you guys realize that despite all the negative results and situations that have been surrounding your club, all the bullshit can never compare to whatever it is you feel at the final whistle.

our minds have already been conditioned and rewired to this addiction. it is why we watch football.

[ASR1927]

[Lupa]

It's been a while since we've seen a celebration of that energy from Francesco. Too long.

He does appear to have lost some weight. Montella mentioned that he was doing really well in training, and he played his heart out today.

Forza Roma!

More? Photos from today
http://www.corrieredellosport.it/foto/c ... enticabile

Laziale turds are going to be hearing about that 'ohhhh noooo' for a long time
http://www.corrieredellosport.it/foto/c ... enticabile

[Jamoldo]

[Lupa]

[Deini]

Oh boy did I enjoy this match. Great to see Totti celebrating like that. 5 derby victories in a row. Never happened.

For safety reasons there were a lot of empty seats. Shouldn't be like that imo. Oh well, I see Roma taking 4th place, maybe even 3rd. So next games are Fiorentina away, Juventus home and Udinese away. We'll take 7 or maybe the full 9 out of those. You can quote me on that. I got faith in this team.

[maro]

Yeah, we've got an easy run-in now, I think - we've already played teams like Bologna and Lecce and Brescia and Cesena, right? And without Siena and Empoli about there aren't so many tough games in which we're bound to drop points.

Let's hope Monty keeps giving Menez starting time and let's hope Pizza stays fit. Burdisso did very well yesterday, but I hope Rosi gets some more opportunities. The translations of his comments after the match aren't entirely helpful, I think - what he said about Pizza was, essentially, that he was injured and that he's a distinctive kind of player with very particular attributes which mean he's not really suited to a three-man midfield (not robust enough to be the defensive pivot; not mobile enough to be one of the mezzale). This seems to me pretty fair (though when the whole team was playing well he did do very well as the defensive pivot, I thought, not so much in breaking play up but in holding his position in front of the back four). And I'm not convinced that something similar's not true of DDR - he's not quite good enough on the ball to be a regista; while he can get forward to good effect, he's not really quite a mezzala; he could be a box-to-box midfielder in a 4-4-2, but that would presuppose the right players alongside him and 4-4-2 is very out of fashion in the Italian game. And so that piece on his play not having progressed particularly over the past 5 years is in some part also a reflection, I think, of his coaches trying to play him in positions where he's not quite comfortable. We've complained in the past that the 4-2-3-1 with Pizza slightly shackles him defensively because he can carry such a threat breaking into the box, but I suspect in the final analysis he needs to be a holding midfielder of one kind or another to play most naturally and most comfortably. And a three-man midfield is never going to let him do this either. Or, at least, not unless you've players like Iniesta and Xavi as the other two.

Oh, and +1 to whatever Chewna says next, because it's bound to be right (again).

[vtec]

the file i posted in the milan thread tells me that udinese have an 83% chance of holding off roma for fourth spot, but that probability does not take into account roma's improvement under montella.

[SPqR]

[Lupa]

I see Radu was as classy as you'd expect while exiting the game
http://www.vocegiallorossa.it/?action=r ... izia=14905

[romawi]

[romawi]

On another note, had Pizarro been healthy for the most of the season, would Ranieri still be on the bench?

[ASR1927]

Roma win and Totti marks an anniversary – but is Lazio's season over?| Paolo Bandini | Football | guardian.co.uk

As newsflashes go, this one was right up there with Dog Bites Man and Bear Makes Do Without Proper Facilities In Woods. Roma win the derby? Yeah, tell me something I don't know. This, after all, was the fifth time in a row that the Giallorossi had won la stracittadina. Despite the fact the teams share a stadium, Lazio have not won when playing as the away side since 1998.

Throw in the fact that their manager, Edy Reja, has never beaten Roma with any of the clubs he has coached – losing seven and drawing two of nine attempts prior to the weekend – and it becomes still easier to understand how even the Rome-based Corriere dello Sport wound up making Roma's 2-0 win their second story this morning (albeit still with a significant front-page presence), opting instead to lead with Milan's draw against Bari. Even the inevitable scraps between fans and police seemed low key for this fixture – only six arrests reported this morning after a small group of Lazio supporters threw fireworks at police.

And yet before kick-off no one would have dared to suggest a foregone conclusion. Lazio, after all, were the ones riding high – a team who had faltered at times since the winter break yet who had remained a permanent fixture in the top four since late September. Roma, by contrast, were supposed to be a club in turmoil after their Champions League humiliation in Donetsk. The aftermath of their 3-0 defeat had seen Daniele De Rossi hurling abuse at the Shakhtar bench and Marco Borriello railing at reporters for making him into "the only scapegoat" for the loss.

But while others were losing their heads, Vincenzo Montella kept his. The Roma manager might be new to this – indeed, as more than one newspaper pointed out this week, he was still in nursery when Reja got his first managerial appointment – but he showed wisdom beyond his years by refusing to be too hard on his players. At training he showed them a video of only the first 40 minutes of their defeat – a spell in which they had played decently and earned a penalty – stressing all the things they had done right. Internal rifts were further healed with a team dinner at the end of the week.

Perhaps we should not have been surprised that the only player ever to score four goals in a Rome derby would know how best to approach one. Montella achieved the feat in a 5-1 victory back in March 2002. The only other Roma player to get his name on the scoresheet that day, incidentally, was the same man who found the net for them again this time round.

Few players can feel the derby as intensely as Francesco Totti, a player whose sensibilities as a Roma supporter famously led him to turn down a move to Lazio back when he was just a boy playing for the local side Lodigiani, and yet in recent years there has been a sense that this is a fixture in which he rarely shows his best. Coming into this weekend he was without a derby goal since 2005. No wonder he was reluctant to make promises when approached by fans at Motodays – a motorbike event on Saturday in Rome – who begged him for two goals and a win.

And yet that was precisely what he provided, opening the scoring from a free-kick – just at the moment when Lazio seemed to be gaining the upper hand – before sealing the win with a late penalty. In a game where Lazio's players seemed all too ready to lose their heads – Stefan Radu and Cristian Ledesma were both sent off in the second half, for a preposterously obvious headbutt and dissent respectively – he even managed to keep his despite at one point taking a boot to the face from Matuzalem.

When Totti added to Montella's haul in March 2002 he famously revealed a T-shirt with the slogan "6 unica" (you are unique) – a dedication to his then new squeeze Ilary Blasi. On Sunday he repeated the trick, only this time the message had been amended to "6 sempre unica" (literally 'you are always unique', though in the context perhaps better translated as 'you are still unique'). "On Saturday we had our nine-year anniversary," said Totti. "It's destiny: I scored when we got together and again this time."

Not once in those nine years – or even his previous nine in Roma's first-team before that – had Totti scored two in a derby, but his joy at the feat may still not have matched that of Rosella Sensi, in what should be her family's final match as owners of the club. The sale to the US consortium of Thomas DiBenedetto, who watched at home in Boston with his family, is expected to finally go through this week. Sensi spoke afterwards of how "honoured" she had been to have been at the club.

As for Lazio, they were left with nothing more than a vague sense of injustice over Roma's opener. The goalkeeper Fernando Muslera had allowed Totti's shot to squeeze underneath him but subsequently said he had been dazzled by a laser pointer, a claim that seemed to be supported by TV footage. The referee Paolo Tagliavento had been aware of the laser being shone during warm-ups and told the players that if they told him it was happening during the game he would immediately suspend proceedings, yet Muslera claimed afterwards his shouts to the official had been ignored.

But regardless of the truths of that situation, Lazio had only themselves to blame for the way they lost their heads afterwards – from the sendings off to Matuzalem's petulance. Ledesma and Radu will face suspensions and Matuzalem may do so if the Italian Football Federation chooses to review the video evidence of the stamp on Totti.

With Stephan Lichtsteiner already suspended for their next game, there is a serious risk of allowing what might have been a disappointing but isolated defeat derail their entire season at a crucial point. Another win for Udinese – this time a 4-0 rout of Cagliari – means that Lazio finished the weekend outside the top four. "In the space of 90 minutes Lazio lost the match, their heads and a Champions League place," reflected Davide Stoppini in Gazzetta dello Sport's Roma edition.

The newsflash may have seemed predictable, but the devil, as ever, is in the detail.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... io-serie-a

[maro]

Let's hope so, Goffredo, though somehow Matuzalem seems to have got away with that stomp. I wonder what everyone thinks of poor old hairy Motta's troubles at Rube? In a way, I find it sad to see; in another, it's an awful lot less sad to see him focking up in prison stripes than in giallorosso.

Chewna, I don't think DDR can play there with that midfield three - certainly unless we also have Pedro and Messi down the wings. For one thing, I don't think Pizza's as mobile as Xavi; for another, Barca's midfield are helped out massively by the fact that the moment they lose the ball the front three help close the opposition down so they win the ball back miles up the pitch (however much thredmund may love Vooch, even he's likely to concede he's not quite Pedro in this regard); and, for a third, Busquets can play the way he does because the whole team is so astonishingly good technically. I was interested that Xavi picked Busquets out in an interview earlier in the year as the best half-touch player in the team - that is, he moves the ball on almost before he's even got it. That's because he's always got someone to pass to and someone he knows will keep the ball even if they're under pressure. By comparison, DDR has many more (often many too many) touches on the ball because we play with a much slower tempo. With our players, using those three, we'd always be better off setting them out in a 4-2-3-1, with DDR alongside Pizza and Menez as trequartista. It's less fluid, but would also keep an extra player behind the ball. I'd be surprised if we don't see it at some stage before the end of the season. Then there is also the fact that Barca have much more pace in their front line and a world-class right back.

[cassano7]

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