Overview
Roma are still involved in a tense top 4 race and the stumble in the last match before Christmas - a 1-2 defeat at Juventus' stadium - has increased pressure. Especially when the "Old Lady" narrows the gap to one point in the Serie A standings.
The defeat in Turin extended Giallorossi's unstable streak of results. They have just suffered more defeats against Napoli and Cagliari, despite interspersed victories against Celtic and Como. With only 3 points in the last 4 Serie A matches, Roma is starting to drop in the rankings, but in theory they still have a chance to chase the top group.
Roma's biggest strength lies in their defensive foundation. They possess the best defense in the league when they have only conceded 10 goals after 16 matches, reflecting the clear improvement under Claudio Ranieri since the end of last year.
Even, considering 2025 alone, the capital team is the team that accumulated the most points, surpassing both Napoli and Inter Milan. If they beat Genoa, they could increase the total score to 82 according to the accumulation streak of the solar year.
In the opposite direction, Genoa entered this away match with a noteworthy story on the coaching bench. Roma's current coach, Gasperini, has coached Genoa for a total of 297 official matches in two periods and is preparing to go through a series of days of facing old teams continuously.
Before returning to Bergamo to reunite with Atalanta, he needs to maintain Roma's superior head-to-head record against Grifone. Giallorossi has only lost 1/20 of their recent encounters with Genoa in the national championship, including 14 wins.
History does not favor Genoa at the Olimpico. In 64 away matches at Rome in Serie A, they only won 9 matches, and the last time was from 1990.
More notably, Daniele De Rossi will return to the "eternal city" in the role of opponent coach - the first time facing Roma as captain after a short period of leading (30 matches) and then saying goodbye last year.
As a player, De Rossi has 616 appearances for Roma, only behind Francesco Totti in the all-time list.
In terms of form, Genoa had a period of cooling down before Christmas when they lost consecutively to Inter and Atalanta. The match against Atalanta was particularly disadvantageous due to the early red card of goalkeeper Nicola Leali, although Genoa still almost kept one point before conceding the decisive goal at the end of the match.
However, since De Rossi arrived, Genoa has won 2/3 of their most recent away matches in Serie A - equal to the total number of wins in 17 away games before that. This shows that they are no longer a weak team when leaving Luigi Ferraris.
Personnel situation
Roma is likely to be forced to adjust personnel, as Lorenzo Pellegrini suffered a hamstring injury on the training ground and will be absent with Leon Bailey.
In addition, Neil El Aynaoui and key center-back Evan Ndicka are currently on duty at AFCON, making Gasperini's force problem even more complicated. On the positive side, Roma welcomed Artem Dovbyk back after a thigh injury.
Genoa also suffered significant losses, especially in the goalkeeper position. Nicola Leali was suspended, while Benjamin Siegrist broke his finger, meaning goalkeeper Daniele Sommariva will start.
Rossoblu will continue to struggle with a long list of injuries including Junior Messias, Morten Thorsby, Hugo Cuenca, Arthur Gronbaek and Maxwel Cornet, while Jean Onana is attending AFCON with Cameroon.
Expected lineup:
Svilar, Celik, Mancini, Hermoso, Rensch, Kone, Cristante, Wesley, Soule, Baldanzi, Dybala.
Sommariva, Marcandalli, Ostigard, Vazquez, Norton-Cuffy, Frendrup, Malinovskyi, Ellertsson, Martin, Vitinha, Colombo.
The match between Roma and Genoa takes place at 2:45 AM on December 30 (Vietnam time).
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