1-0 to Bayer Leverkusen all’Olimpico

The Roma of Europe gets excited, fights even without forces. The big names are missing, the team is tired and discouraged by the almost non-qualification in Champions from the way to the championship and Mou invents an all battle team.

Roma-Bayer Leverkusen, report cards: Cristante super (7.5), Matic warrior (7), Bove finds the joker (7.5)

Rome – Bayer Leverkusen

In the end he’s right, as often happens to him when he smells Europe: Dybala starts from the bench (he’ll come on fifteen minutes from the end), Belotti and Abraham fight like two supporters and then one just like that decides, Edoardo Bove, the kid of Mou, it is he who gives the victory against Bayer and a piece of the final: a goal sought by the young ex Primavera, who steals the ball on the frontline, exchanges with Abraham and shoots on goal, fishing the corner to the right of goalkeeper Hradecky. Mourinho gets more than he imagined, having half the team out and above all in front of a formation like Bayer, certainly fresher and – on occasion – with more talent. As he had amply made clear, all he had to do was stay in the game and go and play at the BayArena in a week’s time. In short, an equal would have been kissed by grace. But Roma did more, they gave him a success on which to build the second leg: they will play as favorites, to reach the second final in a row, after last year’s Conference (won) League.

THE MATCH

After a blocked first half, with Roma struggling in the first ten minutes, in which chances arrived from Andrich and Wirtz and then Ibañez’s header, in the second half, the Giallorossi team showed more courage and less desire to wait . Celik and again Ibañez appeared dangerously in the German penalty area, then there was Bove’s goal, which opened the match and the heart of the 65,000-strong team from the Olimpico, who suffered until the last moment, when Rui Patricio made his life difficult, losing a ball and putting it back on Frimpong’s feet, whose shot found the omnipresent Cristante on the line. Mou is well aware that nothing is finished, that the second leg will be complicated and must be played with the same intensity. But in addition, perhaps, he will have at his disposal some players who have been missing so far. Smalling especially. And Dybala, the real one.

Read the full article
on The Messenger