Roma can be a lot better than they already are. Don't fool yourselves in thinking that this is the best this very talented team can be. That is total horse excrement. There are some players in this team who you would say are in the top six or seven for their position. But what is holding them back from fully realizing their potential?
Our good friend...Garcia.
There have been times when Roma have looked great. Superb attacking passing, with great interchanging with their attacking midfielders. It's been great to watch and that is where people praise Roma and Garcia's tactical ideology. Then there are other times where they religiously stick to this strategy, but get completely and totally trounced and dismembered by teams. The most recent being the public lashing that Barcelona gave them.
You see, the only thing a manager should be concerned about is winning. It's not about how attractive the football is, or how many goals scored or conceded, it's about winning. That is the first and last requirement on the list for any manager of any club. What I get from Garcia is someone who will put his team out to play the same exact way in every match, rather than trying to fine tune his players to adjust their game in order to get the win.
And for that very reason, Roma will never reach their heights. It's a similar situation with Arsenal. Both teams on their day, are great to watch and can be one of the best teams you've seen. Then when they come up against a defensive team who are tactically disciplined, they can look like the most annoying team you've ever watched. Both managers will cling onto their philosophy for dear life and would rather eat a country of cactuses than change. But at least, Wenger has been showing a bit of a Plan B defensive side to his tactics, whereas the same cannot be said for Garcia.
One of Garcia's biggest problems is how focused he is on midfield play. Most players in Roma are midfielders, and those that are strikers, are required to even do the work in midfield as well. Dzeko should be sleeping in the box, and constantly making runs as crosses get rained in. But Garcia instructs his players to concoct chances amongst themselves with pass after pass, after pass. That is why Dzeko has not been hitting the G's and which is why they will always the Almost Team. To leap over the final hurdle, you need to win ugly and you've got to have other ways of playing, knowing how to mix the stew.
I've been calling for his sack for a long time. I think Roma can be much more of a threat in the Champions League and could have even won more Scudetto titles, if only they had someone like Ancelotti or even Laudrup to give them a broader tactical palette. Garcia just doesn't have that and I don't know how many times Roma fans will be happy seeing their team on the cusp of glory or get totally owned, before they literally pick Garcia up and hurl him to the moon, without a return ticket back to our planet.
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HH
