Fiorentina v Roma: Holy Mother of God

By: Martha | September 26th, 2007

SebFrey Two sure signs Raymond Domenech is insane: 1)Philippe Mexes doesn’t have a regular spot in the French national team, and 2)Sebastian Frey is currently FOURTH on their goalkeeping depth chart.

Moving on. Holy shit, what a game — I don’t know about you people, but my heart is still pounding. Despite the periodic flurries of giveaways in the midfield, the skill on display between those two teams was enough to take your breath away, particularly among the young Italians like Aquilani (who came on and was immediately involved in a goal) and Montolivo, whose intelligence and poise is just completely ridiculous.

Fiorentina started like a proverbial house afire, and Roma didn’t even have their first spell of sustained possession until the 12th minute. The Viola failed to capitalize on their presence around the Roma box, though (the story of the half), and the capital club were totally in their element from then on, busting the Fiorentina offside trap enough times to give Cesare Prandelli several heart attacks. Both Roma goals came off counters, but the second was particularly gorgeous: It came right on the heel of Fiorentina’s best (and totally squandered) period wherein they had three or four fantastic, close-range chances within just a few minutes and, just to add insult to all the misses, the flurry of shots ended with Giuly driving the ball into the net on the other end of the of the pitch.

The Viola looked understandably demoralized after Guily’s goal, but they apparently devoted halftime firing themselves up, and came out with an additional attacker and good possession, though they still didn’t force many saves out of Doni. Mutu had about a zillion good chances, while Pazzini had the ball a lot but failed to make much use of it in the box — we’ll see what FiorentinaGianni says, but I found him pretty disappointing today.

I’m terribly biased, obviously, but I daresay thing changed for Fiorentina when Christian Veiri came on with about 20 minutes to play. As opposed to the club’s other attacking players, he doesn’t do anything complicated and is slow as molasses, but he keeps the ball, gets forward, and plays people into position to make things happen. And, what do you know — it works! He won the PK with which Mutu tied the game (dirty, dirty chip from little Better-Than-Totti) and nearly put the Romanian through for the winner a few minutes later. At the other end, Frey was working his usual magic, making a series of fantastic saves which won the Viola their precious point.

Seemed like a fair result for both sides to me, but I daresay RomaChris will think differently when his report goes up later.