Women's Football, Roma-Slavia Prague: three points of heart and effort

"Thank you for letting us experience this night!" The match hadn't even started yet, but Roma fans shouted to Betty Bavagnoli as she approached the stands during the team's warm-up. Perhaps they already knew how it would end, in any case, they were right in the end: Roma suffered, endured, and then won against Slavia Prague 1-0 in their absolute debut in the Champions League group stage. Before the match, Bavagnoli was nervously strolling from one side of the pitch to the other. She knows how much effort has gone into playing these games and how important it was to get there, and as the team returned to the locker room after warming up, the first roar started from the nearly 2,500 paying spectators who had flocked to the Francioni. It's not the Tre Fontane, it's not our home, but it's Roma. It's the Champions League and missing it was impossible. Then the anthem, with the music stopping and the Roma fans continuing to sing, all standing, created a truly special atmosphere.

The Match

On the pitch, Roma immediately started strong, trying to develop the game on the flanks and in the first 5' earned the first corner kick and came close to the opponent's goal a couple of times with Bartoli lined up as a full-fledged outside player. After 8 minutes Slavia also came forward and earned a free kick on the right side of the Roma area: direct conclusion on goal, easily blocked by Ceasar. Despite the intervention of the Roma club in the past few days, the pitch at the Francioni was in very poor condition, which definitely complicated the ground ball game of the Giallorosse. So the most frequent solution was to look for the pass of Haug for Giacinti who was trying to get behind the line. The central defenses also rose a lot, as when Wenninger retrieved a ball in the opponent's three-quarter and offloaded to Bartoli inside the penalty area: the number 13 kicked well from an interesting position forcing the opponent's goalkeeper, Lukasova, to deflect with a dive just over the crossbar. There was a moment when the Czechs seemed to have taken control of the game. Still, the Giallorosse from the half hour onwards raised the center of gravity and Slavia began to raise the level of physicality, often well beyond the allowed limit (they ended the match with five cautions, and it could have even been more). In the 44th minute, there was a great opportunity for the Czechs: from Slavia's right wing came a cross that filtered dangerously between Minami and Wenninger in the box. Still, on Szewieczkova's subsequent sliding shot, Ceasar made the first big intervention of her match. The first half ended with the feeling that a breakthrough was needed to unlock the situation that could have become decidedly more complicated as the minutes passed, all despite Roma's greater dangerousness.

Spugna at the beginning of the second half lowered Bartoli to a 4-man defensive line, moved Giacinti to the outside to create an offensive trident, and also hoped to get a greater impact from Haavi, the one who had struggled the most to get into the match in the first half. That was the decisive turning point. In the 54th minute, a great turn by Haug freed the number 11 who had entered the area with the ball on her foot but was stopped by the linesman for a nonexistent offside. The move to increase the attack density soon paid off, with Slavia struggling to keep the defensive line tidy. In the 62nd minute, Giugliano found Haavi who sprinted with the ball at full speed into the opponent's area, a touch under with the right to overtake Lukasova and the winner tap-in of Valentina Giacinti, with her first European goal with the Giallorosse. From there it was a continuous Roma offensive with several narrowly wasted chances, two more offsides unfairly flagged, and a single chance for Slavia: from a back-and-forth in the Roma area, the substitute Wafula was stopped by the crossbar with Ceasar who couldn't do much.

It cannot be ruled out that that ball was aided by the screaming of the Francioni, who, for the whole match, accompanied Roma in its first victory at the group stages. Certainly, the choruses starting from one stand and moving to the other, getting louder and louder helped to hold on in the final and bring home the three very precious points. Then the celebration on the field and in the stands began. Bavagnoli's newfound serenity (as well as that of several members of the club including Ceo Berardi) and the explosion of joy, were well-deserved and with a wonderful European flavor.