Opinion: Why Barca result doesn’t tell the full story

Roma aren’t the first team to feel the full wrath of Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Luis Suarez and they certainly won’t be the last.

The multi-headed hydra that conquered all in Europe on the path to a prestigious treble last season has continued along a similar vein thus far this season. At the Camp Nou, Luis Enrique’s men have built a fortress - nine consecutive victories in all competitions since the beginning of the league, scoring 29 goals and conceding just seven.

Since February, just one team has managed to score more than twice when visiting the Spanish giants - Rayo Vallecano, who notched two, in a 5-2 loss.

Full credit then should be merited to the side who have been utterly stratospheric and nigh-unstoppable under Roma’s old manager, even factoring in an extended period without Messi.

Roma are on the brink of securing qualification to the knock-out stages of the Champions’ League for the first time since the 2010-2011 edition of the tournament.

They marched to the Bernabeu and dismantled Rafa Benitez’s Real Madird, stifling an offence that had scored an average of over two goals a match at home until that night, putting four past a defence that was, as of mid-October, the stringiest of all teams of the top six European leagues, and the best performing rear-guard that Los Blancos had featured in 18 years.

Roma should head back to the capital with focus fully upon this weekend’s home match against Atalanta, with a careful eye towards the final game day against BATE Borisov but with the loss already banished from their minds.

Arguably the toughest spell of the season is over – a five week stretch that included away visits to Bayer Leverkusen, current league leaders Inter, then-league leaders Fiorentina, and Barcelona, while hosting the German side and battling city rivals Lazio. All told, the side managed a rather healthy four wins, two draws, and two losses over that period, dropping not a single point at home.

That stretch, difficult as it was in general, was only made more so due to injuries that have led some of the side’s key players to miss significant parts of recent matches. Captain and vice-captain Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi are finally nearing a return, but the former has not played a single minute since late September and the latter missed most of the matches that took place this month.

Gervinho injured his right thigh and Mohamed Salah’s ankle ligament injury from the Derby means that the two of the three highest scorers on the team were not able to make the trip to Spain and are not quite ready for a return. Recovering even just one or two of the quartet would be nothing but a massive boost.

From a red-and-yellow perspective, the biggest takeaway from the match should be one that arrived before the whistle even blew. Elsewhere in Group E, Bayer Leverkusen could only manage a 1-1 home draw against BATE. Despite the Barcelona result, Roma still remains in control of its own destiny.

Because UEFA uses head-to-head as a tiebreaker and Roma and Leverkusen are not facing off on the sixth match day, as long as Garcia’s side defeats the side from Belarus, the team will progress through to the knockout stages – a luxury that the team’s biggest rivals for second place in the group, the side from Germany, simply do not have.

Thus Roma are on the brink of securing qualification to the knock-out stages of the Champions’ League for the first time since the 2010-2011 edition of the tournament.

The side’s future relies solely on them – on their response, on their mentality, and their resiliency. Last season’s defeat to Bayern Munich was one that Garcia admitted weighed heavily on the team for months to come yet the team can utilize that experience to spur on to a positive result in two weeks’ time.

Summer recruits Edin Dzeko, Mohamed Salah and Lucas Digne have a combined total of 67 Champions’ League appearances under their belt, not to mention the vast understanding of the competition already present in the squad with players such as Totti (55 appearances), Douglas Maicon (63), Seydou Keita (65), and De Rossi (45). The spine and experience of the squad is only a positive source of inspiration from which Roma can pull.

All that matters now is not the match that just occurred, but the one still yet to come, at the Stadio Olympico, with destiny and capability fully in Roma’s hands.