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HELLAS VERONA

League position: 9th
Head coach: Igor Tudor
Serie A top-scorer: Giovanni Simeone (12)

RECENT FORM

ROMA: W W D L* D
VERONA: L W W L W

Having won three on the spin in all competitions, Roma have now gone three games without a victory after being held at Sassuolo last time out - but they remain unbeaten in four in Serie A.

Jose Mourinho’s side sit seventh going into round 26 of the championship, with fourth place still in their sights and the return of captain Lorenzo Pellegrini to the starting lineup last week was a major boost as we enter the home stretch.

Verona boss Tudor took charge of the Gialloblu for the first time in the reverse fixture, engineering a 3-2 win that ended the Giallorossi’s six-game winning streak at the start of Mourinho’s tenure.

Tudor’s side have continued to defy the odds and the 4-0 thumping of Udinese on Matchday 25 was their fourth win out of six since the turn of the year, leaving Verona ninth and just four point back from Roma.

Possible Verona line-up

(3-4-3)

Montipo; Ceccherini, Casale, Gunter; Depaoli, Ilic, Tameze, Lazovic; Barak, Simeone, Caprari

LAST MEETING

DANGER MAN
Gianluca Caprari

Simeone raced out the blocks at the start of the season, scoring 12 times across the first 17 weeks of the campaign, but he’s fired blanks in seven appearances since.

The Argentina international still brings so much to the team and his Serie A dozen is only bettered by Dusan Vlahovic (18) and Ciro Immobile (19) across the entire league.

But Simeone’s drying in form could well have stalled Verona’s as a collective if it wasn’t for one-time Roma man Caprari.

The 28-year-old has been involved in seven goals in his last six top-flight outings (five goals, two assists) and Caprari has been on the scoresheet in each of his team’s last five victories.

MATCH STATS

Roma have won five of their last seven Serie A games against Verona and the Giallorossi have scored in 24 of the previous 25 league games between the two.

They may have won the reverse, but Verona haven’t done the double over Roma since 1968-69 and the last time they went back-to-back games unbeaten against the capital club was between 2015 and 2016 when the two sides shared three successive draws.

The Giallorossi are currently 24 games unbeaten at home to Verona (W19, D5) and have scored 33 times in the last 12 meetings at the Stadio Olimpico, at an average of 2.8 goals per game.

Roma’s four-game run without a loss (W2, D2) is their longest sequence since their seven-match unbeaten run that ended in November 2020.

PLAYER STATS

• Tammy Abraham has scored more goals (seven) than any other player in Serie A since Matchday 18.
  
• Abraham has 11 Serie A strikes so far this season and one more would see him become the first Englishman since Gerald Hitchens (1962-63) to score 12 in a single campaign in Italy’s top-flight.
  
• Caprari made four league appearances for Roma between 2011 and 2013 and the Verona striker has scored in each of his last three league games; the best such run at the club since Luca Toni bagged in five successive fixtures in 2014.
  
• Antonin Barak (nine) could become only the 11th player to score 10+ goals for Verona in a single Serie A season, and the first non-striker to do so.

WHAT THEY SAID

"We've been in good form since the winter break - it was important to hit the ground running again and we've definitely done that. We've picked up a lot of points that have taken us closer and closer to safety; we are probably only a few points short but we still need to get them.

"Roma are a tough opponent - their coach is the No. 1 around and the squad is Champions League quality, or at least right around there. I know it's going to be a difficult game but that will also serve to motivate us."

- Verona coach Igor Tudor