Roma’s Champions League Charge Puts Juventus and Milan on Edge
A month ago, Roma looked finished.
Inter Milan had just torn them apart, the new champions underlining the gulf between the top and the rest. Roma’s hopes of returning to the Champions League seemed to vanish in that single, brutal afternoon.
Since then, something has snapped into place.
Ten points from four games have dragged the capital club right back into the fight. One point off fourth-placed Juventus. Three behind AC Milan. Three games to go. The table, and the pressure, have shifted.
“We're going well, but we know that we cannot make any mistakes if we're going to have any chance of making the Champions League,” Gian Piero Gasperini said after Roma dismantled Fiorentina last weekend. “We've got three matches that we have to get right and hope that others don't.”
No margin for error. And he knows it.
Gasperini wins the power struggle
Roma’s surge has done more than revive their season. It has settled a power struggle.
Gasperini’s position looked fragile not long ago, his authority undercut by a public spat with Claudio Ranieri, the local hero and senior advisor to the club’s American owners. The row boiled over just before Roma’s 3-0 win over Pisa, the game that lit this current run.
Two weeks later, Ranieri was out. Dismissed from his advisory role. The Friedkin family nailed their colours to Gasperini instead.
It was a bold call. Ranieri is Roma royalty, a lifelong fan and a symbol of the club. Gasperini, though, has the dressing room and the curve of the form table on his side. Fans have stayed with him, even after the clash with Ranieri, because the team suddenly looks alive again.
And the prize is clear. Roma have not heard the Champions League anthem since Porto knocked them out in the last 16 seven years ago. For a club of their size and noise, that absence has felt like an open wound.
Now, with Parma away on Sunday, the Rome derby still to come and Verona — already relegated — on the final day, the route is there. Not straightforward. But there.
Parma have nothing at stake. Verona are gone. Lazio, wedged between them, would love nothing more than to derail Roma’s dream in the derby. That game could define everything.
Milan stall, Roma close in
Roma’s revival has collided with Milan’s collapse.
Two months ago, Massimiliano Allegri’s side beat Inter in the derby and briefly blew the title race back open. Since then, the goals have dried up. One goal in five league matches. Seven points from that stretch. A team that once looked upward now glances nervously over its shoulder.
Roma are closing. Como, only three points off the top four, lurk as well. The race for the Champions League spots has turned into a scrap.
Milan’s problems deepened with Luka Modric’s cheekbone fracture, an injury that rules the midfield leader out for the rest of the season. His absence screamed through their performance at Sassuolo last weekend. No control, no rhythm, no spark.
On Sunday night, Atalanta visit San Siro. Milan cannot afford another misstep. Not with Roma and Juventus both circling.
Malen, the cutting edge of Roma’s rise
If Gasperini has become the face of Roma’s resurgence, Donyell Malen has become its blade.
Twelve goals since arriving on loan from Aston Villa in January. Twelve. In half a season, he has gone from winter gamble to central figure.
The Netherlands striker has given Roma the directness and incision Gasperini’s best Atalanta sides thrived on. The same vertical thrust Ademola Lookman brought in Bergamo, the same creativity Alejandro Gomez once supplied. Malen stretches defences, runs at space, turns half-chances into panic.
He is not just scoring. He is changing the way Roma attack.
With him in this form, with Gasperini finally secure and the ownership fully behind him, Roma head to Parma with a clarity they have not felt in years. The path is brutal: win, then win again, then win once more, and pray Juventus or Milan stumble.
Three games. One point to make up. A club that has waited seven years for the Champions League stands on the brink.
Do they seize it, or spend another season watching Europe’s biggest nights from the outside?
