The Talking Point: Shakhtar seen off after slick displays

Paulo Fonseca and his team were spot on across both legs as Roma comfortably got the better of Shakhtar Donetsk and booked their place in the Europa League last-eight.

Prior to their meeting a week ago, a large amount of the talk in the build-up centred on Fonseca’s return to his former employers - the club where the Portuguese coach lifted a treble of domestic doubles in his three seasons with Shakhtar.

He had already dumped another previous team, Braga, out of the competition in the last-32 with attention now shifting to whether the Roma tactician also had the inside track on a side coached by his former Porto colleague and that boasted most of the same playing staff that were so successful under Fonseca.

“Paulo knows the character of Shakhtar players,” said Fonseca’s friend in the opposition dugout, Luis Castro, ahead of the first meeting.

A nudge over 180 minutes later, it certainly appears the Giallorossi boss’s knowledge of the team he helped forge served Roma well as they dissected an opponent that beat Real Madrid twice in the Champions League earlier on this season.

The first leg at the Stadio Olimpico a week ago ultimately dealt a devastating blow, and that despite the verve of the visitors who set out to play on the front foot in both matches.

In Italy, Castro’s men attempted to squeeze the pitch and stop Roma from playing, but the home side’s answer was to use a quarter-back approach from their centre-backs and deep-lying midfielders that stretched the game beyond Shakhtar’s high defensive line.

This rapid transition beyond the Ukranian champions’ defence led to Lorenzo Pellegrini’s opener and from there on out, it was a combination of world-class goalkeeping from Pau Lopez, highly organised defending and a clinical four minutes that all-but killed the tie late on.

The 3-0 lead Roma took to Kiev was healthy to say the least, but Fonseca insisted pre-match that his side wouldn’t simply put 11 men behind the ball with one leg already in the quarters.

“We want to win,” he said in his pre-match press conference. “It will be important to defend well, but we want to score too. We’re not coming here just to shut up shop.”

With that said, Roma certainly didn’t - and didn’t need to - force the issue early on and UEFA reporter Bogdan Buga perfectly summed up a goalless first half at the NSK Olimpiskiy as Roma “drying up the game”.

They did exactly that, comfortably absorbing everything that Shakhtar proffered in attack in what Fonseca described after the game as a “pragmatic” display.

He said: “It was important to start the game well, and not to concede a goal in the first 30 minutes. Shakhtar had the initiative at the start, but I think we defended really well and launched some dangerous counter-attacks too.”

Just like they did in the Italian capital, Roma - and Borja Mayoral - pounced once the game opened up and took their chances when they came their way to eventually clinch a dominant 5-1 aggregate victory over a well fancied outfit.

Over two legs, it was as professional and disciplined a performance from the Giallorossi as it was clinical, which bodes well for the team after what it’s fair to say has been a somewhat inconsistent month and a half at both ends in Serie A.

These two victories are further qualitative proof of the Fonseca method and if Roma can regularly pick apart both domestic and foreign rivals with this kind of precision for the remainder of the campaign then exciting times lay ahead.