Chris Smalling is my Roma player of the season, as things stand. His closest competitor is Edin Dzeko, and that’s probably about it. I would have put Amadou Diawara in the running, but another season of injuries and lack of continuity has put paid to Diawara’s claim. So it really falls down to Smalling, a player who’s been crucial to Roma’s success by any measure. fans can buy England Euro Cu Tickets online.
If you like stats, he’s regularly (and often by some distance, even over Diawara) the player who intercepts the most passes in the team. If you like tactics, you know those interceptions are crucial to how Fonseca’s Roma likes to turn defence into attack.
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| Gareth Southgate Leaves the Door Open on Chris Smalling’s Euro 2020 Chance |
If you like personality, Smalling has won everyone and their mother over in the city of Roma, while his on-pitch charisma often paves the way forward for teammates to keep confidence under even the most difficult of scorelines – not least of all central defensive partner Gianluca Mancini who, truth be told, has struggled (even if constantly improving) on defending for the best part of the season.
But where Smalling excels at reading the danger and aggressively cutting an opponent, he has never been the best passer for the ball. And this is exactly where Gianluca Mancini is a real talent.
This is also where England manager Gareth Southgate came out this week to openly regret criticizing this part of Smalling’s game when Southgate left the defender out of his 2018 World Cup team.
England Euro Cup Fixture
Match.1: England vs Croatia
Time: 15:00
Date: Sunday, June 14, 2020
Stadium: Wembley Stadium
England vs Croatia Tickets are available.
Match.2: England vs Play-off winner C
Time: 20:00
Date: Friday, June 19, 2020
Stadium: Wembley Stadium
England vs Play-off winner C Tickets available online.
Match.3: Czech Republic vs England
Time: 20:00
Date: Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Stadium: Wembley Stadium
Southgate
Southgate is one of many younger coaches today who value playing the ball from the end line. The goal is to get your opponents to close your four (or three) back players, so as to get even the deepest opponents out of their cage and park the bus.
With Chris Smalling in a Roma shirt, it didn’t seem like a problem. However, Southgate will be aware that Smalling has found a club and a coach whose football does a good job of masking Smalling’s faults.
When we wrote for the first time on Fonseca Football last summer, we pointed out that Roma was finally hiring a coach who could (ironically, given the transfers made at the time) bring out the best in Kostas Manolas.
With a short and compact team that focuses on supporting the man on the ball, you don’t even have to be a good passer or a daring passer, you just need to know how to pass it to 5 meters from his teammate (Pau Lopez, Mancini and / or Diawara) who can do this job for you.
That’s partly what’s helped Smalling re-find his career-high form in Rome; he’s been protected from doing the stuff he often doesn’t enjoy, giving him more time to focus on what he excels at.
Amadou Diawara
With Amadou Diawara in the team especially, Roma’s compact shape on the pitch has been freakishly metronomic; Roma almost always take up no more than an average 20-23 metres length of space on the pitch between all 11 players when Diawara is marshaling things in front of Smalling.
There have been exceptions of course; most notably the Fiorentina away game where Diawara was being shouted at by both Fonseca and Dzeko for different mistakes mid-match and, subsequently, the team’s shape stretched by 11 metres in the second half, leaving gaps that Roma still managed to plug on the day.
They still walked off the pitch with a 4-1 victory on that day, but it shows just how influential Diawara’s confidence is to keeping the team moving as one.
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