Roma are finally as good as Francesco Totti

Francesco Totti is revered as a living legend at Roma, and now he’s playing in a team worthy of his quality.

There was not only a fantastic Francesco Totti on exhibition in the 3-0 demolition job of Inter; the victory belonged equally to a great Roma.

Sure, the legendary striker has been rolling time back 10 years and Saturday’s triumph at San Siro proved no different as he snagged headlines again with another ethereal performance against the Nerazzurri.

But what has stood out in the epoch-making victory and the ensuing climb of Rudi Garcia’s men to the summit of Serie A is that the credit deserves to be spread out evenly across the entire squad.

This arrives in stark contrast to the majority of Totti’s love affair with the Giallorossi since it began in 1993.

That was when popular opinion commonly deemed to place the club in their captain’s shadow, habitually proclaiming the local hero as a mercurial talent deserving of greener pastures; but as someone who stayed on in the capital only out of devout affection for his boyhood side.  As his team’s engineer and artist, he singularly commanded such accolades. Yet times couldn’t be changing faster now.

What the landslide win in Milan served to highlight instead is that Roma are fully growing into a force capable of bringing Totti’s sporting desires and ambitions oft-preached about by armchair pundits to fruition.

Likewise, the campaign taking shape is serving up more than one leading light apart from the 37-year-old. Where Totti once stood alone defending his club’s colours, he currently finds himself in worthy company, as Roma – embodying the club, not just an individual – rule the roost in Italy.

At the weekend, Totti brought the vision to sense openings and the technique to exploit them, scoring the 11th league goal of his career against Inter to boot. Joining him was Daniele De Rossi and Alessandro Florenzi, the rejuvenated club icon flanked by the aspiring one together propagating the Roma cause.

The wealth of talent joining Francesco Totti at Roma is commendable and elevates the team as Scudetto contenders.

The foreign imports starred, too. Mehdi Benatia was a pillar of stability at the back, Gervinho repeatedly turned Alvaro Pereira’s feeble defending to mush and Kevin Strootman continued making a mockery of his mere €16.5 million price tag as he bit into tackles and pulled all the strings in midfield like only the best in the business can.

When each arrived at Trigoria, they paid tribute to Totti and publicly undertook the pilgrimage of helping the veteran statesman make up for lost time and achieve every piece of silverware he has deserved.

Now they are ensuring such statements are not smoke without fire by cementing their place in this Roma symphony and interpreting their roles to perfection at the behest of their talented coach Garcia, whose previous spell at Lille had encompassed overcoming the odds on a regular basis.

Room exists to debate how the result would have turned out if Inter’s Fredy Guarin had not split the woodwork with his ferocious strike following Totti’s opener and if referee Paolo Tagliavento had not incorrectly adjudged Pereira’s foul on Gervinho as worthy of a penalty. But even the Olimpico outfit’s most ardent sceptics would refrain from detracting her utter transformation this term.

After all, no one could have predicted their unlikely surge up the standings following the tumultuous end to last season when a sixth place league finish was aggravated by the insult of losing the Coppa Italia final to eternal rivals Lazio.

Neither would fans so vociferously oppose the departures of prodigious duo Marquinhos and Erik Lamela in the present day, which hindsight kindly portrays for us now as the sale of two players to assemble a brand new team.

The disruptive influence of Pablo Osvaldo has also been weeded from the squad. For the first time in recent memory, Roma – management, team and fans included – is functioning as a united entity, crucially playing under a common banner. At the rate they’re growing, they are a collective force  that must be regarded as the genuine article and whose squad represents her greatest strength; next summer’s sights have been firmly affixed on converting momentary bragging rights into domestic domination.

Whispers of a momentous Scudetto triumph have been circulating under the players’ breath as Garcia’s gladiators begin to vindicate Totti’s faith in the project at hand by sweeping all before them. Just as the eternal forward is without peers in the modern game, Roma concurrently reserve the distinction of boasting the same about themselves in Serie A.

Follow Jeremy Lim on Twitter: @JLCalcio