Roma’s long marathon continues. There wasn’t even time to celebrate Cristante’s winning goal in Udine, as yesterday morning the team met in Trigoria to prepare for the match, scheduled for tomorrow at Maradona, against Napoli. Kick-off at 6pm for another important stage of De Rossi and his team’s Champions League race who, after having pushed away Atalanta – now 4 points away, even if the Bergamo team always have to recover, who knows when, the match against Fiorentina -, they want to try to defend fifth place. To do this we will need to try to score points again tomorrow, in front of a full stadium and a team wounded by a season, spent with the Scudetto on their chest, but extremely disappointing.
To the difficulty given by Napoli’s values, we add the obvious tiredness due to the pace of the commitments and some absences, such as that of the suspended Llorente and Paredes. In all likelihood, Smalling will also be added to them. The English centre-back requested a change the day before yesterday in Udine due to a groin problem. From Trigoria they talk about a not too serious problem, but Chris is unlikely to be able to answer the call and will remain in Rome, trying for the first leg of the Europa League semi-final against Bayer Leverkusen, scheduled for next Thursday.
Staying in the back department, yesterday’s good news concerned Evan Ndicka. The centre-back, absent since 14 April when an illness – which was later revealed, fortunately, to be only a slight pneumothorax – interrupted Udinese-Roma, returned to work with his teammates, completing the entire session, including the practice match. Two days of training – also counting this morning’s finishing session – are probably too few to be able to hypothesize the Ivorian on the pitch from the 1st minute against Napoli, but in these hours De Rossi and his staff are evaluating his conditions and they hope to bring him to Campania. The same hope also applies to Lukaku, who is struggling with a problem with his right thigh flexor. Romelu however, unlike Ndicka, also carried out individual work yesterday. Today was the decisive test for the Belgian’s call-up, who in case of failure will try to return to the cup.
In any case, his use as a starter must be ruled out, with Azmoun ahead of Abraham in the ballot to replace him. Completing the offensive department will be El Shaarawy – who only came on during injury time in Udine -, with one of Dybala and Baldanzi on the right. Having or not having the Joya makes all the difference in the world, but with races so close together, energy management also counts.
In the midfield, Bove will replace Paredes, with Cristante ready to step into the control room and Pellegrini on the left. In front of Svilar, there is room for Celik – disqualified in Europe -, with Angeliño slightly favored over Spinazzola. In the centre, should Ndicka not be ready from the 1st minute, the young Huijsen will partner with Mancini. De Rossi will not speak in the conference, but only on the club’s channels, before leaving for Naples in the afternoon.
