Four Things We Learned: Roma left to rue second half slide

Strong first half but away goal not capitalised on

Although Roma took a deserved first half lead through yet another Cengiz Under strike, their performance dipped in the second half, with Paulo Fonseca's talented side taking full advantage as Facundo Ferreyra and Fred secured a 2-1 win for Shakhtar Donetsk.

Interestingly, the win represented just the third win for Shakhtar in the Champions League knockout stages – all of which, by some quirk of history, have come against Roma.

On a positive note, the Giallorossi's away goal could be vital heading into the home leg in March. After putting in such a strong opening period, Eusebio Di Francesco was scathing that his team dropped off so badly in the second stanza to surrender their winning position.

"The difference was that in the first half we tried to hurt them while in the second we were looking to hold on – to what, I don't know,” he said. “I'm not at all happy with how we played after the break. There were lots of players I should have taken off after we conceded the first goal.

"Unfortunately, we gave them encouragement because our intensity dropped off and we made less of an effort to play our game. We have the chance to turn things around in the second leg now but it's a shame because given the opportunities we had in the opening 50 minutes we should have capitalised better.”

Third man principle in full swing down left

Up against Shakhtar's extremely well-drilled defensive unit, Roma devised some shrewd collective strategies to try and overcome this. The use of Aleksandar Kolarov's dribbling, in combination with Edin Dzeko and Diego Perotti's complementary movement, did a fine job of manipulating their opposition to create a free/third man down the left.

As seen below, Kolarov's dribble has drawn right-back, Bogdan Butko (plus Fred), towards the Serbian and meant Perotti, Butko's man, was unmarked. Dzeko then smartly drops to present Kolarov with a passing outlet, which importantly occupies both opposition centre-backs, therefore leaving Perotti as the free man to receive Dzeko's crisp lay-off.

Using width to progress against a compact block

With Shakhtar often defending in their typically implemented 4-2-2-2 hexagonal shape, which covers central areas very effectively, Roma found using width an ideal avenue to get around this. To do so, knowing the Miners' front two of Ferreyra and Taison would monitor Roma's central defenders, plus their attacking midfielders, Bernard and Marlos, would mark Daniele De Rossi and Kevin Strootman, who pinned them inside, Roma tried to exploit this as much as they could.

The width consequently provided by Kolarov often supplied his team with a perfect option to progress, which was aided by Perotti’s movement that prevented Butko from pushing towards him.

Roma pose a huge threat from set pieces

Possessing a massive size and strength advantage over their adversaries, the away side put this to brilliant use to give themselves plenty of opportunities to score from set pieces. Despite being unable to convert any of these, the methodology behind this was wonderful to observe.

Facing off with Shakhtar's predominantly zonal marking scheme, Roma used a combination of front post decoy runs, powerful runs and nicely staggered positioning across the width of the six yard box to pose a huge threat. Moreover, exploiting their dynamic advantage to gain crucial momentum to leap above their more stationary opposition ensured their goalscoring potential was amplified.

As illustrated underneath, Strootman's decoy run enables Kostas Manolas to have a clear run and subsequent free effort on net, as fellow big men Federico Fazio, De Rossi and Dzeko all supply extra options along the line.