Roma thrash Chelsea 3-0 to claim top spot in Champions League group

Stephan El Shaarawy and AS Roma ran rampant over Chelsea, utterly dominating their English opponents in Champions League action as they ran out 3-0 winners in Italy thanks to a first-half brace from Il Faraone and a decidedly poor showing from the Blues’ defense.

Chelsea got exposed badly just moments into the match, with a long diagonal ball over the top catching Chelsea’s defense unaware, giving Roma an easy goal as Edin Dzeko laid it back to El Shaarawy with a header. That gave the Roma winger all the time and space he needed to run onto the ball and lash a curler past Thibaut Courtois to give Roma a lead just 39 seconds into the match, the fastest goal scored in the Champions League so far this season.

Chelsea would come firing back quickly, getting runs in behind the Roma defense and isolated one-on-one challenges in the final third with some regularity, but they struggled to do much with it. Their best scoring chance — coming off a cross from Pedro after he cut out a lazy clearance from Aleksandar Kolarov — went wasted after Alvaro Morata blasted his shot high off his shin despite being in position for a close tap-in.

They would pay for that dearly, and again thanks to the gifted feet of El Shaarawy, who again exploited a long ball over the top that created chaos in Chelsea’s defense to blast home another shot that beat Courtois with ease, giving Roma a crucial 2-0 lead that they would take into halftime and look to hold well into the second half.

While the goals were scored on fantastic, exciting plays, the bigger story of the game was how physical it was — Roma were not afraid to close down Chelsea players hard, and several times the Blues were left with a player writhing in pain. Chelsea certainly got their shots in as well, but Roma dominated much of the physical play in the match, helping stymie Chelsea’s efforts to find a breakthrough thanks to Swedish referee Jonas Eriksson preferring to leave his whistle untouched for much of the match.

Chelsea did their best to find a breakthrough, but after Diego Perotti scored a screamer from outside the box in the 63rd minute, the Blues mostly just looked lost and demoralized. Roma could have scored at least two more, but the damage was certainly done, and the Italians ran up to first place in their Champions League group with a screaming howl of triumph, while Chelsea headed back to England with more questions at hand than answers.

AS Roma: Alisson; Alessandro Florenzi (Kostas Manolas 76’), Federico Fazio, Juan Jesus, Aleksandar Kolarov; Radja Nainggolan, Daniele De Rossi, Kevin Strootman; Stephan El Shaarawy (Gerson 75’), Edin Dzeko, Diego Perotti (Lorenzo Pellegrini 87’)

Goals: El Shaarawy (1’, 36’), Perotti (63’)

Chelsea: Thibaut Courtouis; Gary Cahill (Willian 56’), David Luiz, Antonio Rudiger; Cesar Azpilicueta, Cesc Fabregas (Danny Drinkwater 71’), Tiemoue Bakayoko, Marcos Alonso; Pedro, Alvaro Morata, Eden Hazard

Goals: None

Three takeaways

Have Roma exposed a Chelsea weakness?

Both matches featured one intriguing development that Roma took ruthless advantage of over and over: Chelsea struggled with long diagonal balls over the top. Both of Roma’s first half goals were scored off such balls, and it’s something that gave Antonio Conte’s team fits across both matches.

Now, Chelsea’s defense has not exactly enjoyed a sterling record of late, shipping eight goals in their last five matches coming into this tilt in Italy. But while that kind of ball has given Chelsea issues at times this season, no team has aggressively attacked them with it like Roma did, and Conte’s side never really seemed to have an answer for it.

It’s an odd weakness for them to have given the general quality of their defenders, but such balls routinely left David Luiz and Antonio Rudiger scrambling, seeming not to know where to be or how to react to such an attack. Now, not many teams are equipped to exploit such a weakness, but Roma proved that they are, and there are several other prominent EPL teams who will be licking their chops to use such a strategy against Chelsea in the near future. Conte needs to fix this problem, and he needs to fix it as soon as possible.

Roma’s well-balanced midfield can be scary

Roma’s midfield trio lacks clear-cut roles for the three players, but that doesn’t mean that Radja Nainggola, Daniele De Rossi, or Kevin Strootman are lacking for action on the pitch. That’s because all three players can step into a variety of midfield roles at a moment’s notice, and they use that versatility to their fullest advantage in big matches like this.

All three men can pick out incisive passes, all three can be a pivot of possession, all three can make key supporting runs, and all three can defend with energy and vigor. Sure, Nainggolan is the better runner, Strootman is better in possession, and De Rossi is the more crunching defender, but none have a clear weakness in any of those roles, and you can see them switch off throughout a match as the tactical situation evolves and creates different demands.

That makes Roma particularly tricky to game plan against, because you never know which one of the three will be coming from which direction. The teams that have had the most success against Roma this season have been able to take one of them effectively out of a match and forced the others to be more static in their roles, but that’s not easy to pull off. Chelsea certainly couldn’t manage it, and Roma’s midfield ran riot on them in this match because of it.

Is Stephan El Shaarawy finally coming into his own?

You could be forgiven if you didn’t realize that El Shaarawy was still just 25 years old, because Il Faraone has been on the footballing stage for a long time already, having been thrust into the limelight by a desperate AC Milan side as a teenager. El Shaarawy struggled on the big stage back then and never seemed convincing in his various loan spells along the way, and it was almost a surprise when Roma saw fit to spend real money to buy him in 2016.

But last season, El Shaarawy was a solid contributor to an excellent Roma side, and this season he’s taken a further step forward, becoming a key part of their attack. That was exemplified against Cheslea, when he terrorized Marcos Alonso and Rudiger with his runs, using pace and excellent footwork to tie the defenders in knots with regularity. And his instincts on scoring both of his goals were absolutely sublime, showing off the tremendous improvements in skill and — perhaps most importantly — in consistency that he’s been making over the last year.

If the kind of form he’s been in of late is indicative of the real player El Shaarawy is becoming, Roma may just have found themselves an excellent and dangerous piece for their attack, and at his age, he’s got a lot left in the tank to cause nightmares for defenders for years to come.