After Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi left Roma, it was obvious that someone needed to step in to provide the homegrown core the side has featured in the last 25 years. Alessandro Florenzi has been made club captain, but it is with doubt Lorenzo Pellegrini who has taken on the role of being the teams homegrown star. This season, the Italian international has become the creative fulcrum of the team and provided five assists in seven league games. This tactical analysis scout report will look at Pellegrinis role in Romas tactics and how that allows him to perform to his absolute best.
Tactical analysis: Lorenzo Pellegrinis importance to Roma
Pellegrini came through the ranks at Roma but really made a name for himself during a two-year spell at Sassuolo. At the Neroverdi, Pellegrini impressed his hometown club enough for them to exercise their buy-back clause and bring the midfielder back in 2017. Since then, the 23-year-olds importance has grown gradually and now he is key to the clubs fortunes.
Tactically, Pellegrinis role is quite similar regardless of how head coach Paulo Fonseca sets the team up. He is always playing between the lines of the opponents defence and midfield and looks to receive in tight spaces and then progress the ball beyond the last line of defence. Roma are very fluid under Fonseca so Pellegrinis positioning changes somewhat depending on what the coach has planned for each game. For instance, in the image below, Roma set up in a 3-2-4-1 in possession as the right-back Alessandro Florenzi stayed narrow while left-back Aleksandar Kolarov pushed on down the wing. As a consequence, right-winger Justin Kluivert kept maximum width on his side, while left-winger Henrikh Mkhitaryan moved into the left-sided half-space to open the wing up for Kolarov. This had Pellegrini then move into the right-sided half-space to give Roma good coverage of the five vertical lanes of the pitch.
However, in the game versus Brescia, all three of Romas attacking midfielders played narrow, with Kluivert in the left-sided half-space and Nicolò Zaniolo in the right-sided one. This meant that Pellegrini played in a more traditional no 10 role behind Edin Džeko.
Regardless of where he is positioned, Pellegrini contrib
