7 – teams in Serie A who scored more league goals than A.S. Roma this season.
4.75 – average goals scored per attacker.
47 – percentage of goals scored by midfield or defence
8 – Roma’s highest individual league goal tally (Totti)
If the entirety of Roma’s attack was combined into one player, he would have won the Golden Boot – but would only have topped the table by four goals.
For everything that Rudi Garcia can be praised for during his two-year tenure as A.S. Roma manager – especially earning Champions League football runners-up twice in a row for the first time since 2010 – his team’s record in front of goal has been entirely forgettable.
The crisis that Roma suffered after the turn of the year was not only caused by a goal drought. At the other end of the pitch, a new-look central defence with Kostas Manolas and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa severely lacked the composure of the previous season’s, who had either been sold or consigned to surgery. Meanwhile, Daniele De Rossi and Miralem Pjanic, so inspirational in 2014, found languishing in demotivating form for most of 2015, leaving the ever-reliable Seydou Keita and Radja Nainggolan to mop up the midfield.
But at the heart of the problem was this: in the 2014-15 season, Garcia found to his dismay that Italian teams had adapted to and learnt to cut out the threat of his attacking system, in which lightning-quick wingers orbit around the slow but ingenious figure of Francesco Totti attempting to slip them in behind the defenders.
Perhaps it was the rawness of the talent on the pitch, summed up by the stretch when teenager Daniele Verde was frequently relied upon to turn around yet another draw. Perhaps it was the dismal failure of Ivorian duo Gervinho and Seydou Doumbia to refresh themselves after the African Cup of Nations.
But whatever the reason, Garcia must realise now that the system needs either refreshing or completely rethinking, and whichever he opts for, he must choose his path fast.
Francesco Totti is a player for the history books but a talent on the wane as he nears his 39th birthday. He certainly scored when Roma needed it most, memorably chipping Joe Hart in the Champions League group stage match against Manchester City, and scoring two desperately needed goals in the Rome derby to recover a 2-0 deficit at half time.
But his league stats reveal his age: two season ago, he took 124 shots and created 102 chances, earning a combined 24 goals and assists. This year those figures were 51 and 48 respectively, yielding 15 goals and assists. The reduced number of appearances does not account sufficiently for the decline in ‘season total’ stats. The eternal captain is a manager’s catch-22: the effect he has on the fans and his fellow players is indispensable, but neither his passing nor his finishing can still be considered competitive for a team of Roma’s standing.
Mattia Destro was an experiment that never paid off and it appears Garcia has given up on him at last with an imminent move to A.S. Monaco on the cards. Arriving as a direct replacement for another unsuccessful youth investment (Fabio Borini), he peaked in the 2013-14 season where he scored 13 league goals. A respectable return – but rather than being a rung on the ladder, that turned out to be the top of the ladder.
His talent is undeniable, catching the eye of European giants such as Chelsea and Arsenal last summer. But he is a poacher in the mould of Filippo Inzaghi, not a creator like Totti, meaning that when he came on a substitute, the giallorossi midfield had to switch tactics. Rather than dropping deep to collect the ball, Destro would hug the defensive line waiting to pounce on the right through ball: usually the wingers’ game. Apart from a few salient beacons of brilliance – his 40-yard volley against Verona springs to mind – his natural disposition didn’t rub along with Garcia’s tactics, this year averaging 0.31 goals per game before his loan move to Milan.
One winger who might have been able to fill the creative void was Gervinho. Having already spent time under Garcia in the Frenchman’s historic conquest of Ligue 1 with LOSC Lille. His career looked on a downslider when he was at the Emirates with Arsenal but a return to his former coach at Roma reignited the flame, becoming one of Roma’s players of the season in 2013-14.
This year he papered over the cracks for Roma at certain points particularly in European competition where he scored 5 times, including one in each leg against Feyenoord to progress to the quarter finals of the Europa League. But the management’s decision to offload him to the Saudi league betrays more than just disappointment with his performance. After all, he has started 8 out of 10 matches for which he has been available in this calendar year. The suggestion is that he’s finally unsettled and does not see a future in Italy what with the rise of younger players.
Youth is precisely the problem at Roma now, or at least an imbalance between young and old. They own a terrific array of attacking talent in Iturbe, Ljajic, Verde and Sanabria but there is a risk in plunging them into the starting line up too early: falling short again next season may expose them to the wrath of the Curva Sud and thereby alienate them from the Roma shirt.
Doumbia and Ibarbo, puzzling decisions when initially made, must either be let leave immediately or used as squad players to fall back on. Luiz Adriano, who could have arrived at the Olimpico in January, would have had just as little success as Doumbia and Destro. This is because the role which the second striker must fill at Roma is a unique one: Roma’s next striker must have the patience to fall behind Totti in the pecking order and the quality to replace him on the pitch.
Now Totti is irreplaceable and everybody knows it. There is no profile quite like his. But the rise and rise of Radja Nainggolan, combined with an in-form Miralem Pjanic, is a creative force worthy of shouldering the burden that Totti leaves behind when he leaves the pitch, never mind when he leaves the club. Roma’s next striker does not have to be quite as clever as Totti, but clever enough to pair up with either or both of these two.
The high proportion of goals scored by the midfield this season is both unnerving and reassuring for Garcia as it means that his attack is flagging, but also that the midfield is a force to be reckoned with. One reason for this is that Totti is always a deep option for a forward ball: sometimes he might as well be considered one of them. Roma’s next striker cannot simply run the channels or poach; he will be relied on for the success of the young wingers running off him.
This is why Carlos Bacca and Edin Dzeko, though proven goalscorers of the highest European calibre, are not what Garcia needs if he is to continue with the system in place. The former is a poacher, an expert at scrappy goals, while the latter is a typical number 9: physical, good in the air, good with his feet. But neither of these profiles fit the Roma bill. The man they are looking for – the man who is all of these things required for the next Roma striker, who is accustomed to Italian football and who is about to be ousted from Manchester City, just like Dzeko – is Stefan Jovetic.
And on that bombshell, let us know what you think on twitter at @ItalianFD or @bosattino
The post Roma’s Striker Woes: The Source, The Stats & The Solution appeared first on Italian Football Daily.
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