By Opta Analyst | Created at 2026-09-17 12:34:57 | Updated at 2026-09-19 08:37:12
1 day ago
With four wins from four in Serie A, Roma are leading the way in the early stages of the season. They face fellow perfect side Inter on Saturday, looking to lay down their title-challenging intent.
Roma have not won the Scudetto since the 2000-01 season.
With Fabio Capello in the dugout and a squad that included legendary figures such as Cafu, Walter Samuel, Francesco Totti, Vincenzo Montella and Gabriel Batistuta, the Giallorossi pipped Juventus by two points.
Over a quarter of a century later, Roma are looking to end that run.
It’s very early days, but they’ve started as well as possible, winning all four games and conceding just one goal. They could win each of their first five Serie A matches of the season for only the third time in their history, after the 2013-14 and 2014-15 campaigns.
However, to claim that fifth win, they will have to beat the only other team in Serie A to have a 100% record: defending champions Internazionale.
Inter visit the Stadio Olimpico on Saturday in a game that already looks like it could be pivotal in the title race.
Roma do have a poor recent record against Inter, winning only two of their last 18 meetings (D6 L10). They also lost their last encounter 5-2 at San Siro in April.
This time feels different, though.
Roma ended last season well. In fact, the Giallorossi have won their last nine Serie A matches; only twice have they ever achieved at least 10 consecutive victories in the competition: 11 between December 2005 and February 2006 and 11 again between May and October 2013.
Head coach Gian Piero Gasperini has had quite the up-and-down managerial career, with two separate spells with each of Crotone, Genoa and Palermo, as well as a very short time with Inter, and a successful nine years at Atalanta.
In the summer of 2025, though, he was tasked with taking Roma to the next level. After largely overachieving in Bergamo, Gasperini headed to the capital to see if he could do the same.
Roma were coming off the back of a rather chaotic 2024-25 campaign in the dugout. It began with club legend Daniele De Rossi in charge, before he was replaced just a month into the season by Ivan Jurić. Less than two months later, Roma had a third boss, and the club turned to veteran coach Claudio Ranieri – his third spell as Roma boss.
Despite all that turmoil, Roma still finished a respectable fifth, but after Ranieri retired from management at the end of the season, Gasperini was brought in just a year after impressively winning the UEFA Europa League with Atalanta.
His time started well enough, with Roma winning five of their first six games (L1). But a run of four defeats in six (W2) between late November 2025 and early January 2026 brought them back down to earth.
It was initially a little ‘all or nothing’. Roma didn’t draw a Serie A game under Gasperini until 25 January, 1-1 at home to Milan in their 22nd league game of the season. They were on the outside looking in when it came to Champions League qualification, but five wins in a row to end the campaign clinched third spot.
And that form has very much carried on into this season. Roma started with emphatic 4-0 wins over Fiorentina and Lecce, before a dramatic late comeback against Gasperini’s former club Atalanta. A hard-fought 2-0 win at Torino on Monday made it four from four.
They head into Saturday’s home clash with Inter full of hope that they can really challenge for the title this season, and it feels as though Gasperini’s mark is well and truly being made in the capital.
As the team style graphic below shows, Roma became far more direct in 2025-26 than in 2024-25. Some of the football prior to Gasperini’s arrival had been a bit slow, and while they certainly didn’t go fully direct, the extra speed with which they played seemed to add something to their game.
That has continued in the early weeks of this season. They’re averaging slightly more passes per sequence, but are yet to play anyone from last season’s top six, so that may well even out as the weeks go on.
Of course, it’s a Gasperini team, so they work hard to win the ball back. Roma led for pressed sequences in Serie A last season (476) – these are sequences starting in the opposition’s defensive third where the opposition has three or fewer passes and it ends in their own half. This shows the quality of Roma’s pressing style in turning the ball over.
This season, they are second behind Juventus for pressed sequences, but they top Serie A for high turnovers (52), and shot-ending high turnovers (15).
Roma also lead the way for direct attacks (13) – open-play sequences that start inside a team’s own half and have at least 50% of movement towards the opposition’s goal, ending in a shot or a touch in the opposition box – as well as progress, which is the average distance moved upfield per sequence (17.2 metres).
Having said that, they are very much controlling games. You can see from their zones of control that they have had more than 55% of touches across the vast majority of the pitch in Serie A games this season.
That means opponents have to be alert as Roma have plenty of the ball (59.8% average possession, the third most in Serie A this season) but they also spring attacks quickly.
One player who has particularly thrived under Gasperini is Donyell Malen. The Netherlands international had a fairly unremarkable year with Aston Villa in 2025, making 46 appearances in all competitions, though only 14 were starts, scoring 10 goals.
However, he moved on loan to Roma in January and almost immediately started making an impact. Malen scored 14 goals in 18 Serie A games during his loan spell; only Harry Kane (16) scored more in Europe’s top five leagues in that time.
Of course, the club made the move permanent in the summer, and he has kept rewarding them. Since his Serie A debut on 18 January, Malen has scored 20 goals in 22 appearances, at least twice as many as any other player in the competition in that period. Across Europe’s top five leagues, he has scored at least four more than any other player (ahead of Kane and Lamine Yamal, 16).
The key appears to be the fact that he’s played as a striker. Malen did play about two-thirds of his time up front at Villa, but he was also used on the right wing quite a bit. At Roma, he is absolutely a striker, and he’s a very good one.
He’s also having good chances created for him. Malen has a non-penalty xG this season in Serie A of 4.23, at least 1.17 more than any other player. Only three other players have more than 2.0.
It undoubtedly helps that Paulo Dybala has been rolling back the years. He has only once managed more than six Serie A assists in a season for Roma since joining in 2022, but he’s just three away from beating that already.
The 32-year-old has assisted three of Malen’s six goals, and has four assists in total in Serie A, the joint-most across Europe’s top five leagues along with Barcelona’s Anthony Gordon and Espanyol’s Javi Hernández.
Dybala has created the most chances in the league, both overall (17) and from open play (14), while he is also showing his worth off the ball, winning possession in the final third more often than any other player (7).
That defending from the front is having the desired impact. Roma have conceded just one goal in their four Serie A games this season, the fewest in the league, and have faced the second-fewest shots (30).
Hard work runs throughout the team. Only three players have won possession more than Roma defenders Emanuele Lulli and Mario Hermoso (both 22), while Hermoso has also made the most interceptions in the division (15).
As a team in total, Roma have won possession 218 times, at least 32 more than any other team, which includes winning possession in the opposition’s final third 24 times, at least four more than any other team.
That is especially impressive when you consider how much of the ball they have (third highest average possession in the league), so on the rare occasions they don’t have it, they are clearly working hard to win it back.
And they made their backline even stronger with the loan signing of Leonardo Balerdi from Marseille. The Argentina centre-back made his first start in the win at Torino on Monday and certainly impressed. Balerdi won five aerial duels and made six clearances, both the most of any Roma player.
It led to Gasperini almost (but not quite) drawing comparisons with the late, great Franco Baresi.
“[Balerdi is] a top defender – a really fantastic one,” the Roma boss said after the win in Turin. “He’s a modern defender who’s physically strong and fast. I can’t compare him to Baresi. Baresi was the absolute pinnacle of centre-backs. I can’t make that direct comparison, although in terms of how [Balerdi] goes about the duties of the position, his aggression, his recovery speed and his involvement in the play.
“Baresi was the undisputed number one, he was untouchable, [but] in terms of characteristics, the comparison holds up.”
Again, we are in the absolute infancy of the 2026-27 season. With 34 games still to play, it can hardly be described as a title race. But given their trajectory, it feels like this is more than a purple patch for Roma. With other giants of Italian football in relative transition, this may just be the perfect time to strike.
There is, though, the small matter of Inter, who have shown their mettle this season by coming back from 2-0 down to win twice already (vs Napoli and Udinese).
It is a challenge Gasperini is relishing, though, despite being on the end of that 5-2 thrashing the last time he faced his former employers.
“We’ve got a few days to prepare,” he said earlier this week. “There’s a stark contrast between now and last season: we took a heavy beating in the second meeting of the campaign, but that was the moment the real Roma came to the fore. Since then, we’ve been going from strength to strength, and not just in results, but in terms of our attitude, behaviour and mentality.
“Inter are the benchmark in our league – they’re top-class and rightly considered the best in the country… It’s an opportunity for us to test ourselves and improve upon our recent performances.”
It should be an entertaining contest. Matches between Roma and Inter have seen the most goals in Serie A history of any fixture, with 540 goals in 186 games (Inter 305, Roma 235 – an average of 2.9 goals per game).
Fifteen years ago, Gasperini spent an ill-fated three months as Inter boss, only lasting five games before being sacked without recording a single win (D1 L4). He will hope to deal his former employers a blow on Saturday.
Funnily enough, he was replaced by Ranieri at Inter, the man he replaced in Rome 14 years later.
This is not about revenge on the Nerazzurri, though – Gasperini has faced them plenty since leaving in 2011 – but it would be a huge statement, and perhaps make people believe this really could be a memorable season for Roma.
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