Serie A 2020/2021 – Hellas Verona vs Roma – tactical analysis

The 2020/2021 Serie A season kicked-off with some entertaining and competitive matches like Juventus vs Sampdoria, Parma vs Napoli and Milan vs Bologna on Monday. The first round of fixtures has also presented to football fans a match between Hellas Verona and Roma, which ended with a 0-0 draw that can be considered as a great result for Verona since they lacked many important players and were playing against a strong team. For Roma, giving away points will cost a lot at the end of the season when battling for European spots.

In this tactical analysis article, the focus will be placed on Veronas and Romas tactics. The analysis will be mainly concerning both teams’ defensive and attacking performances, players’ movements with and without the ball, as well as pointing out the most influential players from both teams and explaining how they had a positive impact on the game.

After completing their takeover from president James Pallotta, Friedkin Group, the new ownership group headed by Dan Friedkin, preferred to give their trust to Paulo Fonseca, Roma’s coach, and keep him in his position to continue developing the team after his relatively good results of last season following the pandemic break.

It was a period that helped Fonseca in thinking about and trying new tactical systems. He ended up using the 3-4-2-1 formation instead of the 4-2-3-1, which did not give the needed results to the team and was marked by inconsistency and instability of performance. Using the 3-4-2-1 with the adequate player choices gave the team a new and fresh start during the last ten matches in Serie A. It also helped them maintain their Europa League spot while paving the way for fans to have more hopes and dreams on this new system.

In this analysis we will see whether Fonseca continued to use the same tactics and formation at the start of the new season or not, and how his choices impacted the final result of the game.  We will also look at Verona’s start of the season knowing that this team finished ninth last season. They were competing for a Europa League qualifying spot at some point, so they will be a tough opponent for Serie A teams.

Lineups

For this match, Ivan Jurić, Verona’s manager, chose to play according to a 3-4-2-1 formation relying on Marco Silvestri as a goalkeeper, a defensive line composed of three defenders; Alan Empereur, Mert Çetin and Koray Günter behind the two central midfielders; the recent addition of Adrien Tameze and the captain Miguel Veloso while the two wingers Davide Faraoni and Federico Dimarco contributed both in the attack and in defence.

In attack, Jurić relied on both Andrea Danzi and Ľubomír Tupta to play just behind Samuel Di Carmine and provide him with the needed support in the final third.

Paulo Fonseca has also adopted the same formation which he used in the final fixtures of last season, the 3-4-2-1. He relied on Antonio Mirante as a goalkeeper and Bryan Cristante, Gianluca Mancini and Roger Ibañez right ahead of him, forming the defensive line which is strengthened with a second line of defence in midfield.

This line is composed of Leonardo Spinazzola and Rick Karsdorp on both wings and Amadou Diawara with Jordan Veretout as central midfielders. With Edin Džeko’s future being blurry and probably not at Roma, Fonseca relied on the new joining Pedro and Lorenzo Pellegrini behind Henrikh Mkhitaryan who played as a false nine most of the time in an attempt to replace Edin Džeko.

Roma’s attacking dilemma

Roma started the match playing with confidence and keeping possession of the ball while relying on Karsdorp, Pedro and Mkhitaryan to create the difference in attack, since Tameze and Veretout passed the ball to them so often mainly through long balls.

Also, Pellegrini started playing in midfield and when the ball reached one of the three attacking players he joined them to help in making passing combinations and make through balls behind the defence and to one of the attacking players when possible.

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