Roma broke their Sardinian hoodoo with their first win away to Cagliari for 19 years last weekend, thanks to effective counter-attacking tactics from Rudi Garcia and a career first hat-trick for Mattia Destro.
Destro is now on 13 goals for the season, level with the likes of Mario Balotelli and Fernando Llorente, and considering his season only started in December his strike rate is remarkable.
In Europe’s top five leagues only Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero have a better goals-per-minute ratio this season than Destro, who is currently scoring on average once every 83 minutes.
Unfortunately for Destro, for Roma and potentially for Cesare Prandelli and Italy too, the striker’s season is now all but over. During the first half Destro clashed with Cagliari defender Davide Astori, swinging an arm at Astori as he ran into the back of him before going to ground himself.
Astori reacted by pulling Destro’s shirt as he lay on the ground, for which he was given a yellow card by referee Davide Massa. Although the referee saw the original incident, it has since been reviewed by the Giudice Sportivo who gave Destro a three game ban for violent conduct as well as confirming a further one game ban for accumulation of yellow cards.
It is the second time in a few weeks that Roma have been penalised through video evidence, with the media primarily responsible for provoking the investigation. The club’s general director Mauro Baldissoni blasted the situation as “unacceptable”, questioning the “conflict of interests” that lie between “certain television stations and certain football clubs” – a reference to John Elkann, who is both on the board of directors of News Corp (who control Sky Italia) and is chairman and CEO of Exor (who own the majority share of Juventus). Baldissoni also insisted that Roma will appeal the decision; I won’t hold my breath on the outcome of that one.
After the decisions to close sections of the stadium earlier this season for territorially discriminatory chants, Roma supporters are also rightly feeling that the Giallorossi are becoming a team to be made an example of by way of punishments while comparable incidents involving other sides go unpunished. This season alone, compare Destro-Astori with Giorgio Chiellini on Innocent Emeghara in Juventus-Livorno, Chiellini again on Dusan Basta against Udinese, Carlos Tevez on Gabriel Paletta in Juventus-Parma or Nicolas Spolli on Ryder Matos in Catania-Fiorentina. Destro’s ban has since led to a spate of ironic tweets hashtagged with #èstatoDestro (Destro did it), but there is a serious point to be made.
Last month Mauro Bergonzi missed Daniele De Rossi striking Mauro Icardi during Roma-Inter and the midfielder was able to be punished retrospectively. This time the situation is different; since Massa saw the incident and acted on it, correctly or not, the referee’s decision should be final. If it is not, then it sets a dangerous precedent. At what point does an incorrect decision become worthy of reviewing? Who decides that it is worthy of reviewing?
The authorities have shown themselves to be incapable of resolving ambiguous issues in their regulations on territorial discrimination, and there are similar grey areas when it comes to judgement by television. Most concerning for Roma, there is little or no uniformity of justice – even Walter Sabatini has commented that exemplary punishments are being given only to Roma.
In any case, Roma must continue to focus on their task at hand rather than focus on their continued struggles in the courts. Garcia has some serious selection problems against Atalanta as Destro is not the only one missing for most of the rest of the season. Mehdi Benatia limped off towards the end of last weekend’s match with a thigh problem, and the first to second degree injury to a quadriceps muscle is expected to keep him out for up to a month.
Federico Balzaretti and Kevin Strootman’s seasons are both over, and Alessandro Florenzi and Miralem Pjanic are also suspended in addition to Destro. In addition, Michel Bastos sustained a back injury in training on Tuesday and Francesco Totti continued a personalised training session after picking up a slight injury during the warm up against Cagliari.
As a result of so many absences, the door is open for the fringe players in the coming weeks, in particular Adem Ljajic and Rafael Toloi. Toloi put in a decent performance against Torino in his only game for the club so far but is yet to convince he deserves a permanent contract, while Ljajic has fallen from favour after a positive start to the season. He has started just three times since January, and his lack of playing time has already led to suggestions he could leave for the Premier League or the Bundesliga in the summer.
Nonetheless Garcia has always said that he is relying not only on Ljajic but on his whole squad, and that anyone from Ljajic to Luca Mazzitelli should be ready to come into the first team at a moment’s notice. As the end of the season approaches and the absentee list grows, the coach is likely to be calling on them sooner rather than later.
