There are a lot of questions surrounding AS Roma as the new Serie A season kicks off. They've got some new players in the side, and a new coach as well. Their new coach, Luis Enrique has only coached in Spain before, and it's a whole different beast than the Italian Serie A.
Still, for about 2/3 of the match it looked like Roma was the better team. They had the better quality possession and certainly the better chances. Francesco Totti was doing a wonderul job distributing. Osvaldo got a nice header down for the Romans in the 21st minute, only to see it gobbled up by the keeper.
Roma got two quality chances late in the first half. In the 35th minute, Miralem Pjanic smacked a rocket on target but Agazzi held on in goal for Cagliari. Then in the 39th Osvaldo put in another outstanding effort, only to have Agazzi come up with another quality save. The half ended scoreless.
Cagliari had done a lot of their best work on the counter all night. It finally paid off for them in the 68th minute. Conti, the former Roma man, found pay dirt after the Romans failed to get back and organize on defense. 0-1 to Cagliari. Then just a minute later it all went south for Roma as Jose Angel cut down a Cagliari player in frustration and was shown the red card.
The rest of the drama happened in stoppage time. Moestafa El Kabir caught Roma on the counter again and slotted it home from an angle at 90'+4. Daniele De Rossi tallied a consolation goal at 90'+7 on what proved to be the last kick of the match. The full time result was 1-2 to Cagilari. A nice start for them.
Enrique has some work to do, although I don't think the Roma performance was poor by any stretch.
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