What is the problem with Roma’s squad?
Roma weren’t embarrassed on Sunday against defending champions Inter Milan, but they went down without so much as a whimper in an attacking sense, getting shut out by the league’s most talented defense in a 1-0 defeat at the Stadio Olimpico.
As Roma toil in the midtable and their ultras battle against their putrid ownership, it’s fair to want to take a turn towards the sporting and wonder how a team that made two brilliant summer signings in the attack could be so thoroughly boring – and subar.
Roma are suffering from the same problem they had that Jose Mourinho papered over with his brilliance, even when the Giallorossi were in Conference League nd Europa League Finals.
This squad is completely unbalanced. There is no real attacking width, with Stephen El Shaarawy and Zeki Celik masquerading as wide fullbacks, whereas their only actual wide midfielde or wing back in a back-three system is forced to pretend he is a competent defender at center back, Angelino.
The result is a Roma side that cannot spread teams wide and has more playmakers than they know what to do with, which leads to the issue of said top-class playmakers underperforming because they have no space to work with.
Roma do not have a single player with multiple assists despite owning Paulo Dybala, Matias Soule, and Lorenzo Pellegrini. Striker Artem Dovbyk is the only player with multiple goals, and three in eight is, quite frankly, unimpressive when the entire team is built around feeding you opportunities.
With the possible exception of veteran midfielder Bryan Cristante, there isn’t a single Roma player having a good season individually, even though there has been investment in the squad and virtually all these players have been standouts at other clubs.
The problem is Roma don’t have an architect maximizing the personnel at their disposal. It’s too bad they did have one of the best in this role just a year ago, but they stupidly fired him instead of listening to his pleas. You deserved better than that, Jose.
Who is Juve’s breakout attacker?
I don’t think anyone should go overboard with praising the Juventus attack, because they still have the lowest goal-scoring output of any team in the top half of the Serie A table besides 10th-placed Roma, whose issues were already described above.
That said, Thiago Motta has visibly improved Juventus from an offensive standpoint when watching the final product on the pitch, and 11 goals has been more than enough for Serie A’s only undefeated side, given they’ve surrendered just one goal in eight matches to this point.
Juventus are obviously led by Dusan Vlahovic up top and very reliant on the Serbian international for goals, but Motta has unearthed some hidden gem youngsters around the former Fiorentina man, even beyond last season’s obvious breakout candidate in Kenan Yildiz.
See, as part of their youth rebuild under the former Bologna manager, Juventus will need to find a breakout attacker every season to improve the team in the present season and then to either be a building block for the next five years or fetch a fair price on the transfer market.
This year’s candidate appears to be Samuel Mbangula, who came from out of nowhere to score and assist in the 3-0 opener against Como. With Federico Chiesa now in Liverpool, Mbangula is the most talented left winger in the squad, if we posit that Yildiz is truly a No. 10 and not a No. 7.
Mbangula is just 20 and in his first Serie A season as a key player, but he’s already been arguably Juve’s most dynamic attacking player alongside Yildiz this season.
Whereas Yildiz is starting to get known internationally, Mbangula is only a key name to watch among the Serie A faithful. With three goal contributions and seven key passes in five appearances, Mbangula is someone the Bianconeri should be showing more trust on the left wing; he has something to offer that no other player does on the wing in Turin.
Is Christian Pulisic Serie A’s best player this season?
AC Milan have snuck into the top four of the Serie A table after eight matchdays after squeaking by one of the teams just one point behind them in the sea of contenders, as they beat Udinese 1-0 this weekend.
It was Pulisic who had the key play of the game for the Rossoneri, finding the early assist for fellow winger Samuel Chukwueze for the lone goal in a game that saw Milan go down to 10 men just minutes later.
Pulisic has so often been the one to make the decisive play for Milan, and nobody on the Rossoneri has contributed more goals to the cause this season; the American has scored five times with three assists.
In his first season with Milan in 2023/24, Pulisic broke out of his shell and became a more intelligent, decisive, and incisive player. His agility, ability to win one-on-ones, and quality of the final ball were far beyond what he showed previously at any point in his career with either Dortmund or Chelsea.
Pulisic is now a complete winger on either side, and his improved playmaking has truly taken Serie A by surprise. This season, Pulisic is averaging 2.5 key passes per game, and for as much as former MVP Rafael Leao tends to dominate the conversation in Milano, Pulisic has been undoubtedly the more consistent performer since his arrival at the San Siro.
In a vacuum, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is the best player in Serie A, and if you watch this regularly, you’ll have a very hard time hearing a convincing argument against the Napoli savior being the league’s best.
But when it comes to who places second or even who has been the best performer this season specifically, Pulisic may have the edge. Only strikers Mateo Retegui and Marcus Thuram have as many or more goal contributions than Pulisic, whose Milan side has scored fewer goals than either Atalanta or Inter Milan.
Pulisic has been carrying Milan in most games this season, as the Rossoneri are a deeply flawed side both from a coaching standpoint and from a squad-building standpoint after another rather haphazard summer transfer window.
Although the argument against Pulisic at the end of the season will be that he benefits from Leao, the real question is, who is helping whom? And prior to even asking that question, it must be pointed out that Kvaratskhelia did not suffer in his Serie A MVP candidacy in 2022/23 despite playing alongside a better player than Leao in Victor Osimhen.
Pulisic is easy for a lot of people outside the United States to dislike, especially if they were exposed to the rather harmful media hype machine during his time at Chelsea.
But the previous noise belies the fact that Pulisic has morphed into a world-class winger worthy of this level of praise, and because Serie A – and only Serie A – pays homage to U.S. Sports by calling its chief individual award the “MVP”, Pulisic has a clear leg up.
Because when it comes to assessing a player’s value to their side and the side’s projected performance without that star player, it’s becoming clear with each passing match that a Milan without Pulisic is a Milan in total disarray.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.