Paulo Fonseca at AS Roma 2019/20 Part 1: Attacking play

Despite being one of Italys biggest clubs, AS Roma have not won a Serie A title since the 2000/2001 season. It is unlikely that the near 20-year wait will come to an end under in the near future, due to the dominance of Juventus over the previous decade, but Roma fans can be optimistic as their new manager, Paulo Fonseca, has a record of overachieving at clubs. He first took tiny Portuguese team Pinhalnovense to the Taça de Portugal quarter-finals in two consecutive seasons. Then, he led Paços de Ferreira to their debut season in the Champions League. Fonseca won the domestic double in each season he spent in Ukraine with Shakhtar Donetsk, while also beating Manchester City in the group stages of the Champions League. Fonseca certainly has the pedigree required to elevate Roma back onto the European stage, but how has he done so far in his first season?

In this tactical analysis, Ill take a look at the attacking tactics used by Fonseca at Roma this season.

Variations of the 3-2-4-1 in the build-up

Fonseca has almost exclusively used a 4-2-3-1 with Roma this season, using it 81% of the time.

However, when building up their attacks, Roma use positional rotations to create a 3-2-4-1 shape. There are two variations of this shape. both of which play almost identically in the build-up, with the difference between them being how the shape is created from the preferred 4-2-3-1. Before we discuss the two variations of the 3-2-4-1 shape, lets take a look at the general shape to see the main principles.

In the image shown above, we can see Romas 3-2-4-1 shape in the build-up. Regardless of how it is formed, it shares the main principles of the shape which are:

a consistent d
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