Milan 0 – Roma 1

By: Gianfranco | October 28th, 2007

I am absolutely furious. That was one of the worst games I have seen in a long time on all different levels. From the passing, to the opponents, and the officiating it was one of the worst advertisements for Serie A and just plain bad football.

Ball Movement

The passing in this game was abysmal, Milan’s number one pass man, Andrea Pirlo, quite possibly played his worst game ever in the Rossoneri. His passing was atrocious, his marking was worst, and his involvement in the attacking third was nonexistent. Milan were barely able to complete passes in their own half, let alone Roma’s. I will give credit to Roma they anticipate the ball very well, but Milan basically made their job that much easier with sloppy passes to players in triangular coverage. It is a miracle that Roma lacked that killer instinct in the attacking third because this game may have been worse than the 0-1 score line. Nevertheless, the fluidity and attacking only showed up for a minute and the rest of the game the Rossoneri did very little to warrant a victory.

The Academy award goes to…

Take your pick; Cassetti, Doni, De Rossi, Cicinho, Vucinic, I will stop before I name the whole Roma squad. I will never deny that Milan has a large group of diving extraordinaires, but I no longer can blame Dida for being the biggest baby in history, that title belongs to Doni. This GK went down on three separate occasions clutching all different body parts, only to be perfectly fine. Heck on one occasion he even used the hand that he was bitching about to stand prop up, this is not the first time I have seen this type of display from him. Doni alone wasted about ten minutes of quality football, nice job asshole.

doni

Officiating
ref

This was one of the single worst displays of officiating I have ever seen. Eight yellow cards, six in the second half, and Ambro was sent off (I do agree with the call), but again great sell by De Rossi. The real problem was Rossetti missed a few very important calls, and also played some very questionable advantage calls for both teams. The tackling today was horrendous and most of it was studs up, but as a referee you are supposed slow these things down early, he just plain let it get out of hand, to the detriment of both teams.

Consequences

This loss basically means the Milan’s Serie A campaign is over, and if this run of play continues so is their chances for a CL spot. It is very expect to good results against the big clubs when you are losing to small clubs, Empoli, and big clubs like Roma. They have yet to play a resurgent Napoli, Inter or Juve. Things are not looking all that good, on the brightside they can still play their hearts out in the CL, which I am sure they will do but it is hard to believe that their form will change all that much. The Milan that showed up to play looked tired and sluggish, unable to really mount a sustained attack, and almost totally lost in the middle of the pitch. The more I think about it the more I believe the transfer window is going to be huge. I just hope the brass remembers the San Siro Old Folks home needs to be closed…