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Capital city service derailed?
Roberto Gotta
Archive
Rarely has a day of celebration and a week of anticipation been tainted in such a way.
With Roma having just completed a rare ten-match winning streak and the local derby against Lazio coming up next Sunday, all Roman hearts should have been accelerating their beat and counting the days until the match.
But Francesco Totti's cringe-inducing fibula and ankle fracture after an innocuous-looking tackle from behind by Empoli defender Richard Vanigli (what are the odds against two players suffering the same type of injury in high profile matches on the same weekend, after Alan Smith's at Anfield?) changed all of that.
With a three-month prognosis for full recovery and his much-awaited contribution to Italy's World Cup campaign now in danger, Totti has been left mumbling on his fate in a hospital bed, where a plethora of well-wishers and various personalities with an eye for a good photo-opportunity have been visiting him, while Roma are celebrating, albeit with a shade of sadness, their successful cavalcade through the last ten matches in the Serie A.
Their feat had been accomplished so far only by Juventus in 1931-32, Milan in 1950-51 and Bologna in 1963-64 (they all went on to win the scudetto, which of course won't be the case this time).
Despite missing a couple of matches with an injury to the left ankle, the same that was turned the wrong way after Vanigli's tackle, Totti had been a great part of that run. It included a 1-0 win over Milan and a 4-1 cakewalk at Udinese, plus the attrition-filled home and away affair with Juventus in the Italian Cup, when Roma brilliantly went up 3-0 in Turin in the first let before giving up a brace then losing the return leg 1-0, which still gave them passage to the semi-finals on the away goals rule.
But the captain's brilliant form had been just one of the ingredients that coach Luciano Spalletti has mixed together in order to obtain what is now, given Fiorentina's recent decline, the Serie A's most attractive side.
After a shaky start to the season that included a series of disappointing home performances and the never-ending saga of Antonio Cassano's contractual status and attitude, Spalletti had briefly been seen as just another coach, albeit a talented one, ultimately unable to find a medicine for Roma's perennially unstable condition.
Roma is a city where suffocating pressure translates into hundreds of fans attending practices, a dedicated, AS Roma-only daily newspaper and an unbelievable number of radio stations who seem to cover soccer around the clock, sometimes in open defiance of rationality and with a good dose of 'us against the hated North' mentality, never more so than when the subject of Totti.
His inability to reproduce his excellent club form on an international level and his perceived penchant for theatrics - how sadly ironic that seems now - are often brought up by the national media. And I won't even go past a mere mention of the Nazi banners at the home match with Livorno, of course.
A perception of under-appreciation and snobbery has helped many a side forge a better identity and tighten the dressing room bonds, but Spalletti tried to concentrate on the task at hand on the training pitch instead of playing mind games, and the results have been magnificent.
Once Congolese striker Nonda got injured and Vincenzo Montella started having similar problems, leaving Roma short of natural strikers, Spalletti opted to adapt his various formations (4-3-1-2, 4-4-2 v Juve, 4-3-3), which had enjoyed intermittent success, to accommodate more midfielders.
He used Totti as a lone, withdrawn striker with a greater emphasis on runs from midfielders and wing players like Mancini. After beating Livorno 3-0 at home, Spalletti went into more details about his side: 'It's not true we play without strikers, as we've got Totti and two attacking wingers like Taddei and Mancini.'
Though the truth is that at the beginning of the season Totti, for lack of midfield support, had been forced to track back in order to receive the ball and had been worn down by the need to cover a lot of space.
After Spalletti shifted him up front Totti's range of movement was reduced, and he had improving support from the rejuvenated Perrotta and De Rossi.
The latter's form had dipped to worrying opponent-kicking levels a few months ago but has now sprung upwards in a Pirlo-like role for Roma. Totti had found more opportunities to take on defenders instead of having to provide both inspiration and finishing. Of Roma's 26 goals since the start of their winning run (December 21 against Chievo), none has been scored by a proper striker.
Totti has eight (four penalties). Mancini, playing more on the left than on his preferred right, has seven (one penalty). Perrotta has four, De Rossi three, Taddei two and Aquilani and Chivu one, from the penalty spot.
And the fact so many spot kicks have been awarded to the giallorossi in the last 45 days is a testament to their quick passing and proficiency in one-on-one situations, although a couple of them, notably in the come-from-behind win over Cagliari, were more the result of dodgy refereeing than actual merit.
This attacking style, with few long balls - no one would be receiving them anyway - and a tendency for quick one-twos, players attacking space and constantly switching positions has provided everybody who's been willing to adapt.
'My players have shown they can run 40 yards to exchange positions, so our opponents won't know which direction danger's coming from,' said Spalletti on the chances to go forward and surprise the defense, as Perrotta has shown with great effect.
The defense has also improved. Defender Philippe Mexes has metamorphosed from the answer to a trivia question ('Which player's dodgy transfer saw Roma banned from registering new players for a year?') to one of the side's strengths.
Spalletti labelled the Frenchman's recent performances 'so good it's embarassing', a 180 degree turnaround from when the latter words had been used with a wholly different meaning for Mexes.
Of course, football being football, even the most scintillating displays can hit a bottleneck if a team does not score, and in the case of last Sunday's win over Empoli it was one of the visitors, midfielder Busce, who inexplicably hit a right wing cross towards his own keeper Cejas, forcing him to stretch to palm the ball away from goal and into the path of Perrotta, who easily slotted it home for the winning margin.
Rome, as ever, is a strange and fascinating place when football is concerned. You watch a match from the Olimpico press box and at times you get the uncomfortable feeling not all of those sitting around you ever heard of the 'no cheering in the press box' rule, not only because it's never even crossed the minds of most Italian clubs to believe such a thing exists in the first place, let alone enforce it.
On Sunday, Vanigli was reduced to tears by the barrage of hostile questions in the press interview room after the match, before some reporters stepped in and tried to stop the public execution, but Totti's injury again raised a matter that has frequently been discussed here: the treatment dished out to superstar players by opponents.
Roma's captain, the frequent victim of over-the-top challenges by defenders hoping to put him off his game or get a reaction like Totti's spit in the face of Danish midfielder Poulsen at the 2004 European Championships, had as recently as fifteen days ago displayed the state of his ankles in front of the cameras of Roma's own TV channel for all to see, showing a bruised, battered pair of feet even before Vanigli had come to town.
He'd called for more respect for talented players, but of course all players should be able to display their skills without having to pick themselves up after a rough challenge meant to have them hear 'footsteps', as they say in gridiron, for the rest of the match.
The diminishing skills of defenders more used to zone defending than man-to-man marking, who have been taught more about tactics - not a bad thing in itself - than on how to effectively cut off service to strikers and dispossess them with a clean tackle, has also frequently been mentioned when such matters are brought up.
This has again been prominent in newspapers since Sunday's incident, along with an appreciation of Totti's maturity in dealing with his injury and exonerating Vanigli of blame, despite the fact the Empoli defender had already tackled him from behind a couple of minutes before that fateful challenge.
Sunday's derby at Lazio, themselves on a high after winning at Fiorentina and unwillingly allowing Roma to overtake the viola in fourth place, will keep its huge appeal, with the giallorossi going for a record eleventh win in a row and their opponents using this as another motivational tool (as if), but as the ever surprising Paolo Di Canio put it, 'I am going to miss Totti. It's not a real derby without him'.
The rest of Totti's team-mates, though, are still more than worth watching. | 
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