That’s it for tonight’s blog. Thanks for your company, bye!
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Napoli 2-0 Venezia was the score in tonight’s other game. A penalty from Lorenzo Insigne, who missed one earlier in the game, and a goal from Elif Elmas settled the match in the second half.
Full time: Roma 3-1 Fiorentina
Peep peep! It was a bit fraught at times, especially in the first 15 minutes of the second half, but ultimately that’s a more than satisfactory return to Serie A for Jose Mourinho. Jordan Veretout scored twice to settle a dramatic, seesaw game that included a red card apiece, two assists for Tammy Abraham and two Roma goals that were disallowed for offside on the field and then given by VAR.
Fiorentina were really impressive going forward, especially their captain Cristiano Biraghi and the debutant Nicolas Gonzalez. No chance they will finish as low as 13th again this season. It’s too early to say where Roma might finish, but they’ve made a much better start than they did a year ago.
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90+3 min Vlahovic cracks a good shot from 22 yards that is well held to his left by Rui Patricio.
90 min Four added minutes.
89 min Terracciano makes a fine save to deny Shomurodov, who was put through on goal by Carles Perez.
88 min In other news, there’s been all sorts of trouble during the Ligue 1 match between Nice and Marseille. We’ll have more of that later, I suspect.
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87 min The matchwinner Jordan Veretout is replaced by Edoardo Bove.
84 min A double substitution apiece: Perez and El Shaarway replace Mkhitaryan and Pellegrini for Roma, while Sottil and Saponara come on for Venuti and the impressive Gonzalez.
82 min The scoreline flatters Roma a touch, a state of affairs that will doubtless keep Jose Mourinho awake all night.
80 min Fiorentina appealed for a foul on Vlahovic in the build up - it was in the Roma area so would have been a penalty - but there was nothing in it.
Jordan Veretout gets a second goal against his old club, but it was all the work of Eldor Shomurodov. He rumbled infield from the right, held off Castrovilli and slid a superb pass through to Veretout. He timed his run from midfield immaculately - the run made the pass, really - and slipped the ball calmly past Terracciano.
GOAL! Roma 3-1 Fiorentina (Veretout 79)
Lovely goal!
78 min Cristante runs onto a loose ball but drives well wide from distance. Roma have managed the game pretty well since Fiorentina’s equaliser.
76 min Benassi spanks over the bar from the right side of the penalty area.
74 min Another change for Fiorentina: Marco Benassi replaces Bonaventura.
73 min The relentless Biraghi wins another corner for Fiorentina. He takes it himself, curling a deep outswinger that is headed up in the air by Igor and cleared by Roma.
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71 min It’s been a helluva start to the Serie A season: eight games, 29 goals, six red cards, VAR checks galore.
69 min Tammy Abraham’s race is run. He’s had a quite outstanding debut, especially when you consider he was in quarantine until this morning, and he gets a huge ovation as he is replaced by Elmor Shomurodov.
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GOAL! Roma 2-1 Fiorentina (Veretout 64)
For the second time tonight, VAR is Jose Mourinho’s friend. Mkhitaryan robbed Pulgar near the centre circle, moved forward and flicked a pass outside Igor to Abraham. He drove a dangerous ball across goal that was missed by Mkhitaryan and turned in by Veretout. That’s a second assist for Abraham, who has also hit the bar and was brought down when Dragowski was sent off.
66 min They’re still checking.
VAR check Hang on, they are looking at the offside, as they did with Roma’s first goal.
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64 min: Veretout has a goal disallowed for offside! It was made again by Tammy Abraham, but he was slightly offside in the build up.
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62 min: Abraham hits the bar! This game is all kinds of fun. Karsdorp took a short throw to Pellegrini, who flicked the ball neatly over a defender and half-volleyed a cross towards the near post. Abraham got away from his man and leapt majestically to slam a header off the top of the bar. That was a terrific effort from Abraham.
A left-wing corner was played short and worked back to Pulgar. He curled a cross towards the far post, where Milenkovic got the wrong side of Cristante far too easily. He controlled the ball deftly with his right foot and cracked it under Rui Patricio with his left.
GOAL! Roma 1-1 Fiorentina (Milenkovic 60)
It’s been coming, and then some!
59 min Biraghi destroys Karsdorp on the left and flicks a cross into the middle. It’s half cleared to Pulgar, whose crisp low shot through the crowd is held by the falling Rui Patricio. That was a decent save because he must have been at least partially unsighted.
58 min Fiorentina are going to be well worth watching this season. We know all about Vlahovic, and Gonzalez looks an outstanding signing.
57 min Mkhitaryan is put through on goal by Pellegrini, but overruns the ball and it goes through to Terracciano. The offside flag went up after that, though I’m not sure even that will have spared Mkhitaryan’s blushes after such a poor touch.
55 min: Good save from Rui Patricio! Biraghi’s clipped ball forward is backheaded cleverly by Gonzalez to Vlahovic, who turns smartly but then shoots too close to Rui Patricio.
54 min Mkhitaryan runs onto a good pass from Pellegrini but can only stab the ball straight at Terracciano from 25 yards. He didn’t have the legs to get away from the defenders.
53 min Pulgar is booked for fouling someone. I’ll be honest, I can’t keep up with all the cards.
ROMA DOWN TO TEN MEN!
52 min It’s ten a side. The returning Nicolo Zaniolo, who was booked in the first half for a foul on Gonzalez, has been given a second yellow for another foul on the same man. There were no complaints from Zaniolo, who knew it was a naive challenge.
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50 min It’s been a good start to the second half for Roma, who should try to put this game to bed at their earliest convenience. Mourinho’s Spurs were hopeless at defending 1-0 leads last season, so he won’t want it to be 1-0 with 15 minutes remaining.
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46 min Abraham brings the crowd to life with a lovely piece of skill, flicking the ball one side of Igor and running round the other to collect. Nothing comes of it but that was stylishly done.
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46 min Peep peep! Roma begin the second half.
Fiorentina have made a half-time substitution - Gaetano Castrovilli is on for Youssef Maleh.
Half-time reading
Half time: Roma 1-0 Fiorentina
Peep peep! Jose Mourinho’s Roma are a goal up and a man up, though it hasn’t been as comfortable as those bald facts might sauggest. A confident Fiorentina were the better team for much of the half – but crucially not for the 12-minute period in which Bartlomiej Dragowski was controversially sent off and Henrikh Mkhitaryan gave Roma the lead.
Tammy Abraham was involved in both incidents and will be very satisfied with his debut. Another new boy, Fiorentina’s Nicolas Gonzalez, has been the most exciting player on the pitch and is their biggest hope of an equaliser. See you in 10 minutes for the second half.
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45+3 min Bonaventura is booked for a late tackle on Vina.
45 min Three minutes of added time.
44 min An excellent move from Fiorentina. The impressive Gonzalez breaks forward from the halfway line and finds Biraghi in space on the left of the area. He cuts the ball back to Maleh, whose shot has the sting taken out of it by Karsdorp. The ball bounces up and is punched clear by Rui Patricio, under pressure from Vlahovic. Zaniolo was booked for a foul on Gonzalez in the build up.
42 min Pulgar’s free-kick is headed down by Vlahovic and claimed comfortably by Rui Patricio. Roma break and Mkhitaryan’s deflected cross forces Terracciano to scamper across his line to grab the ball.
40 min A quiet spell in the game. Fiorentina, who lost their way for a while after the red card and goal, have started to dominate possession again.
36 min Fiorentina are having a good spell. Biraghi’s outswinging corner is headed towards goal by the backpedalling Igor, and Rui Patricio moves across his line to make a comfortable save.
34 min: Good save from Rui Patricio! Pulgar clipped a lofted pass to Bonaventura, who pirouetted cleverly away from Vina on the edge of the area and suddenly found himself through on goal. He had so much time that he couldn’t decide whether to shoot from a tight angle or try to give the goal to Vlahovic. In the end he hit a slightly unconvincing shot that was blocked at the near post by Rui Patricio.
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32 min Fiorentina started this game really well, but they may have to write it off as a bad job. The debatable sending off of Dragowski has changed everything.
31 min Zaniolo shuffles infield from the right and spanks a left-footed shot that is pushed away to his left by the diving Terracciano. Good save. It’s so good to see Zaniolo back in the team after all his injury problems.
Abraham ran down the left to collect a loose ball before cutting inside and slipping a short pass through to Mkhitaryan. He took it nicely on the half turn and passed it to the left of the substitute goalkeeper Terracciano.
GOAL! Roma 1-0 Fiorentina (Mkhitaryan 28)
It’s been given! Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who had a mixed (euphemism department) relationship with Jose Mourinho at Old Trafford, has scored the first Serie A goal of Mourinho’s spell at Roma. And it was made by Tammy Abraham, who has already had a huge impact on his debut.
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28 min And still.
27 min They’re still checking.
26 min: Mkhitaryan has a goal disallowed for offside. It was made by Abraham and finished calmly by Mkhitaryan, only for the flag to go up. It’s being checked by VAR, and it’s extremely tight...
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24 min: Just wide from Pellegrini! That was a really nice move from Roma. Karsdorp, on the right, acrobatically kept Mkhitaryan’s pass in play before rolled a low cross towards Abraham. He allowed the ball to run past him to Pellegrini, who he whipped a first time shot just wide of the near post from the edge of the area.
22 min Roma look more relaxed now it’s 11 v 10, and most of the last few minutes have been played in the Fiorentina half.
19 min Fiorentina bring on their substitute goalkeeper Pietro Terracciano. Jose Callejon is the poor sucker who has to go off.
Dragowski is off! The red card has been upheld. I think that’s pretty harsh.
Ibanez surged out of defence and clipped a smart through pass to Abraham, who knocked it past the outrushing Dragowski and was tripped. It was a heavy touch from Abraham, so I don’t think he would have scored, but the referee had the red card out straight away.
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17 min: Dragowski sent off! This will be reviewed, but as things stand the Fiorentina keeper has been sent off for fouling Tammy Abraham.
14 min Pulgar flips the resulting free-kick over the defence towards Gonzalez. He dives to head the ball back across the area, and it hits a Roma defender before bouncing through to Rui Patricio. At first I thought Gonzalez should have headed towards goal, but on reflection he would have needed the neck muscles of Bruce Banner to do so.
13 min Pellegrini is booked for a lunge at Gonzalez. Mourinho screws his face up to the fourth official. At the moment Fiorentina look the more confident side.
10 min At the other end, Pellegrini’s corner from the left is helped on by Zaniolo at the near post and bounces right across the six-yard box.
9 min Gonzalez’s dangerous cross from the left just evades Callejon, who made an excellent run across the Roma area. Mourinho bounces out of his seat to make a tactical point to his team.
6 min Fiorentina have come to play, as we thought they would under the new coach Vincenzo Italiano. They’ve been more like the home team in the early minutes.
4 min It’s been a high-tempo start from both teams. Zaniolo does superbly to wriggle away fromt two men on the left but then overhits his cross.
2 min “I love Roma,” writes Ruth Purdue. “Have done since the 90s and that Italian football show… He’s going to ruin it, isn’t he?”
At this stage, I just think we need to get behind Tammy Abraham.
1 min Peep peep! Fiorentina kick off from left to right.
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The players are ready to go. Roma are wearing their new New Balance kit, the latest in a long line of beautiful home kits. Fiorentina are in their yellow third strip, which looks better on the TV screen than it does in an internet browser.
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“I think Jose Mourinho can restore his reputation,” says Yash Gupta. “He seemed to have become static in his tactics since his Inter days; maybe back in Italy he will face the reality that he is still one of the best. Stop creating unnecessary mess and he will be back for sure.”
Those are his biggest problems, man-management and self-sabotage. You can still win major trophies with his tactics, at a push, but you can’t if you walk round looking like this.
Whatever happens tonight, it won’t be as dramatic as the game that has just finished in Udine. The final score was Udinese 2-2 Juventus, but that tells about a tenth of the story. Juve, specifically their goalkeeper Wojcech Szczesny, threw away a 2-0 half-time lead. Then Cristiano Ronaldo, who reportedly asked to be left out of the starting line-up amid rumours of a move to Gillingham, came off the bench to head a majestic injury-time winner - only for VAR to spot that a couple of his armpit hairs were offside.
The other 5.30pm (BST) kick-off wasn’t bad either. It finished Bologna 3-2 Salernitana, with all five goals in the second half. Oh, and both teams had a man sent off. What happened to this sophisticated, binary league we all fell in love with while watching Como in 1984-85?
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Pre-match reading
Team news
Tammy Abraham starts up front for Roma, who switch from 3-4-2-1 under Paolo Fonseca to 4-2-3-1 under Jose Mourinho. Abraham’s quarantine period only ended this morning. Fiorentina’s big summer signing, the Stuttgart winger Nicolas Gonzalez, also makes his debut.
Roma (4-2-3-1) Rui Patricio; Karsdorp, Mancini, Ibanez, Vina; Veretout, Cristante; Mkhitaryan, Pellegrini, Zaniolo; Abraham.
Substitutes: Villar, Perez, Calafiori, Shomurodov, Reynolds, Mayoral, Kumbulla, Diawara, Bove, Zalewski, Fuzato, El Shaarawy.
Fiorentina (4-3-3) Dragowski; Venuti, Milenkovic, Igor, Biraghi; Bonaventura, Pulgar, Maleh; Callejon, Vlahovic, Gonzalez.
Substitutes: Terracciano, Quarta, Saponara, Castrovilli, Terzic, Benassi, Ranieri, Duncan, Sottil, Bianco, Munteanu, Kokorin.
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Preamble
Hello and welcome to a new season of Jose TV, the comedy-drama that has kept the football world royally entertained for the best part of two decades. This series is being filmed on location in Rome, with Jose Mourinho returning to Serie A 11 years after that surprisingly moving farewell to life at Internazionale. He would take a trophy, any trophy, but what he really wants is to restore his credibility by winning another league title.
Mourinho is in a strange position - he is one of the greatest coaches in football history, yet he isn’t one of the greatest football coaches in 2021. He has lost his way, apparently unable or unwilling to adapt to a changing world, and Roma have taken a gamble in appointing him. Mourinho has taken a punt too. Roma have some good players but they finished seventh last season, 29 points behind the champions Inter. Nobody knows what will happen on the field. The only guarantee is that the spectacle - if not always the football - will be must-see TV.
Kick off 7.45pm BST.
