Perhaps we ought not to believe Claudio Ranieri when he tells us that this the last time. He announced his retirement from club management last May, delivering what seemed like a perfect storybook ending, saving Cagliari from relegation. The club where he made his name three decades earlier, raising them from Serie C to the top-flight. An island, Sardinia, where the locals think him as one of their own.
Yet Ranieri’s first love has always been the city he grew up in and the team he supported, Roma. He had managed them twice before, but when they called for a third time in November he found himself unable to say no. The club was a mess, having already fired Daniele De Rossi and Ivan Juric 12 games into this Serie A season. They had won only three of those.
The start was not easy. Ranieri’s first league games were against Napoli and Atalanta, both ending in defeat, with a European draw against Tottenham in between. Roma beat Lecce next but then lost to Como. It seemed all too possible that Ranieri had set himself up to end on an unhappy chapter.
Then they started winning. A 4-1 rout of Sampdoria in the cup, followed by a 5-0 demolition of Parma. Roma drew away to Milan then beat Lazio in the derby. Of course they did. Ranieri always does. It was his fifth time managing Roma against their city rivals, across three stints in charge, and his fifth victory.
Roma kept going. From early February through to the end of March, they won seven league games in a row. By the time they arrived at this weekend’s return fixture against Lazio, they were unbeaten in 15 Serie A games. Ranieri had cut the gap between them from 15 points down to just two.
He has been clear that he only intends to lead Roma through to the end of this season. That position was stressed again on the eve of this game. “This will be my last derby,” Ranieri said. Asked about his history of success in this fixture, he replied with a gently outdated Roman idiom: “l’acqua vecchia non macina più.”
It translates literally as “old water does not grind”. The image is of a mill powered by a river; once the water has flowed through, it does not return. Just a saying, much the same as “water under the bridge” in English, but another of those Ranieri-isms that remind us who he is.
An old-fashioned manager for an old-fashioned derby – in its buildup and setting at least. January’s meeting had been the first time in five years that Roma played Lazio in an evening kick-off. The scheduling was repeated on Sunday. It might not happen again for some time. Thirteen police officers were reported injured as they worked to keep rival Ultras from coming into contact outside the ground.
If that was the all-too-familiar ugly side of these occasions, then the scene inside the Olimpico was a reminder of what organised support can create at its best. Roma were the ‘away’ team, meaning their fans would occupy only the Curva Sud. Enough space, still, to create a spectacular tribute to Agostino Di Bartolomei, the captain who led them to their second Serie A title, in 1983.
The Lazio supporters’ choreography was even more breathtaking, filling the rest of the stadium with a series of images to illustrate the history of Rome, set against a blue sky to match their shirts.
If only the game could have lived up to its backdrop. The stakes were high for both teams, starting the weekend in sixth and seventh, three and five points outside the Champions League spots respectively. By the time they kicked off, they knew Bologna, previously fourth, had lost away to Atalanta.
And yet both looked more exhausted than energised, playing at a slow tempo with a fair bit of time-wasting from the start. For Lazio, that felt understandable, having just returned from a demoralising defeat in the away leg of their Europa League quarter-final against Bodø/Glimt on Thursday. Roma had a full week to prepare for this game, yet they were the more sluggish.
Had Ranieri tinkered too much? He changed from the usual 3-4-2-1 into a 4-2-3-1. The idea was to allow Alexis Saelemaekers and Matías Soulé to pin Lazio’s full-backs, but in practice the Biancocelesti dominated the wide areas.
Roma’s goalkeeper, Mile Svilar, had to make a sharp reaction save almost immediately to keep out a header from Alessio Romagnoli. Gustav Isaksen torched Angeliño down the right before testing the keeper again at his near post. A save Svilar would have expected to make, much like the one he produced when the same player shot from the outside the box before half-time, but his had been a busy match so far.
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He was beaten right after the interval by another Romagnoli header, this time from a free-kick on the left. Roma’s marking was poor, more than one Lazio player getting behind their defensive line.
The response was tepid. Roma drew one good save out of Christos Mandas in the 54th minute, Gianluca Mancini’s glancing header from a corner spinning across goal until the Lazio goalkeeper stretched to push it away. But there was little sense of an equaliser coming before Soulé delivered one with 20 minutes remaining.
Saelemaekers brought the ball in from the left into the space Italians refer to as the ‘trequarti’ – three-quarters of the way up the pitch. Soulé came towards him from the opposite flank asking for the ball. His teammate rolled it across. The Argentinian had nine Lazio defenders arranged in front of him and bypassed them all with a first-time shot off the underside of the bar.
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Atalanta 2-0 Bologna, Como 1-0 Torino, Fiorentina 0-0 Parma, Inter 3-1 Cagliari, Juventus 2-1 Lecce, Lazio 1-1 Roma, Udinese 0-4 Milan, Venezia 1-0 Monza, Verona 0-0 Genoa
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A goal worthy of deciding a derby. This one was only good enough for a 1-1 draw that suited neither team in their European pursuit. Even for Ranieri personally it was a bittersweet pill: good enough to allow him to retire undefeated in Rome derbies, but the first time he had failed to win.
“I thought about that before and after,” he said. “As a fan it’s very beautiful to finish undefeated, though I would have liked to close with one more win. But this is football: sometimes it gives you beautiful things, other times less beautiful. You need to know how to accept it.”
He spoke about things he would miss from the derby – “the full Olimpico, which captivates you and fills you with pathos” – though he will still have some part in it next season. Roma’s director of football, Florent Ghisolfi, confirmed Ranieri will move into a new role after this season as a “sporting advisor” to the board.
Already he has been helping them to choose his successor. Ghisolfi said on Sunday they have whittled the list down to the “last few”. Before that, there are still six games left, and a place in Europe to aim for. Even as Roma extended their unbeaten run, Ranieri was grappling with selection conundrums.
In their last two games, against Juventus and Lazio, his team looked sharper after the second-half introduction of Eldor Shomurodov, joining Artem Dovbyk up front. But as Ranieri pointed out, if he starts them both, he doesn’t have as many options to change a match with his bench. Soon, these will be someone else’s problems. Unless Ranieri decides, once again, that this is not really the end after all.