Four games in and this season’s Serie A is already shaping up to be an exciting affair, and Bologna v Roma saw two of the unbeaten sides in the league going toe-to-toe. With 14 goals scored so far between them, this one had enough potential for us to saddle up and head to the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara for the next instalment in our ‘Framed’ series.
Roma were looking to stretch an impressive 20 game unbeaten streak and were heading into the game in confident goal-scoring form, having racked up eight goals in their last two games. Bologna had also made a strong unbeaten start to the season, which saw them at the dizzying heights of second place in the league. On paper there was a lot of promise for some attacking football, however the weather seemed to have other ideas, providing a sodden pitch and dampening the atmosphere somewhat.
The Renato Dall’Ara is one of our favourite stop-offs when we’re on the continent, with the wonderful Marathon Tower keeping a watch over proceedings, but on this occasion it was far from the prettiest of matches, with the action in the first half mirroring the weather. Given Roma’s free-scoring this season, Bologna wisely played with a compact defence, and this along with the weather served to restrict any free-flowing action we may have been hoping to see.
Thankfully the second half picked up, with Kolarov curling a free kick into the top corner soon after kick off to give the visiting side the lead. It lasted all of five minutes though, with the goal-scoring hero quickly turning villain as he clumsily felled Soriano in the box; Sansone duly dispatching the resulting spot kick.
Late on and Roma found themselves down to 10 men when Gianluca Mancini collided with Federico Santander, earning his marching orders with a second yellow card. With five minutes left to play and Roma holding out against the oncoming Bologna attack, that was that, game over. Or so you may think if you were among the fans that had seen enough. But this was another example of why you should never leave a football match early, as Pellegrini picked out a perfect cross for the inexplicably unmarked Dzeko to head home from all of five yards out.
An unbelievable twist at the end of an otherwise drab affair; the fortress Dall’Ara conquered right at the death by the invading Romans.
How do you say "there's a bit of dog sh*t there mate" in Italian?
Photography by Giacomo Cosua for SoccerBible.
