Roma Blew Two-Goal Leads to Real Madrid and Man United, but Are Unbeaten in Serie A

Roma have now let two-goal leads slip away in two Champions League games this fall, losing 4-3 to Real Madrid after leading 3-1 and 3-2 to Manchester United at Old Trafford after leading 2-0. In Serie A, nobody has beaten them. Saturday's 3-0 win over Sassuolo left Gian Piero Gasperini's team unbeaten through 11 league games and two points behind leaders Lazio going into the international break.

It is a strange split for a club that went into the weekend being asked whether it could survive another collapse. The answer at the Stadio Olimpico was 28 shots to Sassuolo's six, according to the match data, and a result that was settled by the hour mark.

Roma had United beaten for 45 minutes on Tuesday. Matías Soulé scored after Rodrigo Mora set him up, Donyell Malen added a penalty, and both goals came inside the first 18 minutes. By halftime, Opta's supercomputer gave United just a 5.4% chance of winning, per Goal.com.

Gasperini then took Mora off at the break and sent on Niccolò Pisilli, a midfielder for an attacking midfielder. Goal.com's tactical review noted that Roma did not have a single shot from that point on. Bruno Fernandes scored a retaken penalty after the VAR flagged Bryan Cristante's foot inside the box on the first attempt, and Matheus Cunha scored twice late, the winner coming in the 86th minute, before he was sent off.

Italian outlet TuttoMercatoWeb called the halftime change the mistake that "condemned" Roma. The loss left them 19th in the league phase on four points, two behind United.

The 19-year-old Portuguese playmaker started again on Saturday and was one of Roma's best players before Gasperini took him off in the 66th minute, this time with the game long finished. Mario Hermoso opened the scoring in the 27th minute, Sebastian Walukiewicz turned Malen's shot into his own net three minutes later, and Mora made it 3-0 in the 58th minute, swapping passes with Malen at the edge of the box and curling a right-footed shot inside the far post. It was his fourth league goal in his first Serie A season.

Roma did it without Paulo Dybala and Lorenzo Pellegrini, and that matters, because Mora has been playing the role Dybala usually fills.

Gasperini pushed back on the idea that Roma owed anybody a response. "This team keeps confirming itself, it doesn't need to give answers," he told Sky Sport Italia. He called the United penalty "absurd" and said the two European defeats "burn," but he framed them as late collapses after "performances of the highest level" in a run of nine games in 27 days.

Asked whether he would take second place now, he said no. "It's nice to play this league," he said. "You should never have illusions or disappointments, especially on a path like ours. I don't know what we'll be capable of."

Then he named the favorite. "I think Inter, as everyone rightly says, are the team best placed to win," Gasperini said. "For the rest, us and the others can compete. Lazio too, if you want. If Inter slip a bit, everyone can compete." Asked about Inter's game against Como the next day, he laughed: "We're all perched on the branch, like owls."

Inter won that game 2-0, so the break arrives with Lazio on 29 points, Inter on 28 and Roma on 27.

The pattern is clear enough. In Italy, Roma have been good at protecting what they build. In Europe, against Real Madrid and United, they have not, and with four points from their league-phase games so far, Gasperini's halftime decisions in the Champions League will be watched as closely as anything his team does in Serie A.