Roma undone by The Roon & Ron Show

The hype going into this match was of course cen­tered on the 7–1 thrash­ing that Roma took from Man­ches­ter United last sea­son at this same stage. How­ever, any­one with com­mon sense could see that this match would have very lit­tle in com­mon with that famous night.

For starters, this match was at the Sta­dio Olimpico in Rome not Old Traf­ford. Sec­ondly, the teams had a slightly dif­fer­ent feel about them with Roma miss­ing their tal­is­man Francesco Totti and hop­ing that their big No9, Mirko Vu?ini?, could sup­ply them with a goal or two. United were miss­ing Gary Neville through long-term injury.

One thing about the for­ma­tions that were shown on TV, Fer­gu­son decided to employ Ronaldo in the unusual role of a lone striker with Park, who was a bit of a sur­prise starter, and Rooney doing the hard work in behind him.

Roma lined up with their usual 5-man mid­field and with United employ­ing a 4–3-2–1/4–3-3 for­ma­tion, the early going was a bit scat­tered. When United did get spells of pos­ses­sion, they moved the ball around leisurely and Roma did lit­tle to pres­sure them. Nei­ther side showed a great deal of urgency in the early going. United were get­ting lit­tle wide play as their full­backs were cau­tious, Wes Brown espe­cially, of being hit on the counter-attack. Brown sat a bit deeper as the per­ceived threat of Mancini loomed. As the game wore on, it became clear that Mancini was not going to have much impact due to his poor deci­sions when he did get pos­ses­sion in the United half. This allowed Brown to ven­ture for­ward a lit­tle more often and cre­ate more space for the United forwards.

One of the best bat­tles of the night was see­ing Cris­tiano Ronaldo, employed as a striker, going up against Philippe Mexes. Mexes did well for large spells to close Ronaldo down; mak­ing sure that he had lit­tle time or space when the ball was at his feet. Ronaldo took a fair amount of phys­i­cal con­tact in the first half but I felt he spent too much time with his arms aloft and a pouty look on his face. His energy would be bet­ter spent get­ting up and get­ting back into the action. I felt the ref in charge had a decent game — he gave free-kicks when they made sense and book­ings for repeated fouling.

Roma looked the more likely side to score in the first half as Vu?ini? con­tin­ued to ask ques­tions of the vis­it­ing defence. In the 28th minute, he turned Rio Fer­di­nand inside out and spooned his shot just over the bar. Shortly after this Nej­mana Vidic injured his knee by land­ing awk­wardly after chal­leng­ing for a ball in the air. He was replaced at the 33 minute mark by John O’Shea. I had thought Wes Brown might move into cen­tral defence and O’Shea would come in at RB but Sir Alex obvi­ously felt oth­er­wise. I have to say that on reflec­tion it makes as much sense to leave Brown out on the right as he has spent the major­ity of the sea­son out there and O’Shea offers a lit­tle more size to go against a player like Vu?ini?.

Roma con­tin­ued to pres­sure but against the run of play, Ronaldo popped up with a pow­er­ful header that gave United some breath­ing room. Rooney started the play with a sub­lime turn against Mexes. He then played in Paul Scholes who drifted a soft cross back across the box for Ronaldo to run onto.

I thought at half-time that Roma should sub Mancini off and bring on Guily. Mancini was more often than not waste­ful in pos­ses­sion and while Roma enjoyed longer spells of pos­ses­sion around the United penalty area, they were doing lit­tle with those chances. Roma turned up the inten­sity to start the sec­ond half and United look to be on the ropes. Around the hour mark, Edwin Van der Sar came up with a majes­tic save from a Vu?ini? header to keep United in the lead.

The over­all flow of the match started to change a few min­utes after Owen Har­g­reaves with the Van der Sar save the wake-up call that United needed. With Har­g­reaves on the field, Car­rick and Scholes were able to more fully boss the mid­field area and one can only imag­ine how the match might have gone had Har­g­reaves started in place of Ander­son. The young Brazil­ian does show flashes of excel­lence but looks a bit too unpol­ished for this level of com­pe­ti­tion at the moment. I would be sur­prised if he started the sec­ond leg at Old Trafford.

The game was effec­tively killed off when a mix-up in the Roma back­line allowed Wayne Rooney to pounce and toe-poke home his 6th goal in 7 games against Ital­ian teams. Wes Brown’s deep cross was kept alive by some good hus­sle from Ji Sung Park who nod­ded the ball back into the mid­dle where Doni inter­cepted but spilled it to Rooney’s feet and he wasted no time in slot­ting it home. A sec­ond away goal makes Roma’s job mon­u­men­tal for the return leg as it is rare that a 2–0 away lead is squan­dered in the Cham­pi­ons League knock­out phase.

I think had Roma taken advan­tage of their early dom­i­nance that this match could have been much dif­fer­ent but United turned in a very clin­i­cal and pro­fes­sional per­for­mance. They got more than they could have hoped for and are setup very nicely to advance to the semis. The job is not done yet but bar­ring a major col­lapse at Old Traf­ford, they should progress.

United’s thoughts will start turn to their prob­a­ble semi-final oppo­nents, Barcelona. 17-year-old striker Bojan Krkic struck the all-important away goal in the 12th minute to give his team a slen­der vic­tory over Schalke in Gelsenkirchen.