Roma now come to play as well as fight, a team in the image of Daniele De Rossi

When Lorenzo Pellegrini first wrapped the captain’s armband around his bicep, he presumably did not expect one of his leadership duties to include lending his team-mate a pair of shorts so he could keep his dignity in a post-match interview.

Roma’s match-winner in Saturday’s Derby della Capitale, Gianluca Mancini, had ecstatically tossed his pantaloncini into the Curva Sud as a memento for some (un)lucky ultra. “But I kept my shirt on,” he said. “I want to keep it forever.” Adidas had released a special one for the 183rd Cupolone, a throwback jersey teasingly promoted earlier in the week by the gaunt and lank-haired whippet Marco Delvecchio, a revered scorer of nine goals in this rivalry at the turn of the century. Uomo derby as he came to be known — The Derby Man — was used in the launch as the personification of 90s nostalgia. His highlights were playing on VHS while he took a call on a landline. Mancini must have been on the other end. “Got any advice, bomber?” In 10 derbies, he’d never scored. So that’s why Mancini held onto his shirt.

“I’m the happiest man in the world,” he said. These were words he borrowed from his coach Daniele De Rossi who said, on the eve of the game, that’s exactly how he felt after he won his first derby as a player two decades ago thanks to a famous backheeled goal from Gianluca’s namesake, Brazilian Amantino Mancini. “We hadn’t won one of these for a while,” the Italian Mancini said. It had been two years since they had last beaten Lazio. De Rossi’s predecessor Jose Mourinho lost four of the six derbies he oversaw and Roma’s owners, the Friedkins, made up their minds to sack him after their rivals eliminated them from the Coppa Italia early in the new year.

“We were coming off some bad derbies,” Mancini acknowledged. Mattia Zaccagni, absent on Saturday, condemned them to defeat then as he did this time last year in the league. Mancini was sent off on that occasion and didn’t calm down after the final whistle. Ever the exhibitionist, he leapt out of the dressing room “totally naked” to confront his Lazio counterpart Alessio Romagnoli. “He didn’t even have a towel on,” a shocked Lazio owner Claudio Lotito remarked.

It was symbolic of the frequent undignified and rash streak that characterised Mourinho’s time at the club. Mancini was, in many respects, his poster boy, an enforcer unafraid to overstep the mark and go to extremes. As such, Roma’s jersey wasn’t the only throwback on Saturday. They won the game via a corner kick, as often happened under Mourinho, and through a header, their 12th of the season in Serie A, via a centre-back.  Mancini went above and beyond, a trait that earned him Mourinho’s respect. Early in the first half, he pointed at his tongue, a gesture DAZN’s sideline reporter took to mean he needed medication to play through pain. De Rossi sent Dean Huijsen and Chris Smalling to warm up in case Mancini needed to come off.

But he stayed on. Then he scored the only goal of the game.

“I had a couple of issues but you don’t go off in a derby unless you break a leg,” he said. “You suffer more when you’re sat on the bench.” Romagnoli, his opposite number at the heart of Lazio’s defence, had gone off at half-time. A lifelong Lazio fan who came through the ranks at Roma, his failure to emerge from the interval evoked memories of Alessandro Nesta staying in the locker room at 3-0 down in 2002. Only, this time around, Roma were not running away with the derby. There were not quattro pappine, the four fingers Francesco Totti waved at Igor Tudor 20 years ago to tell the current Lazio coach, and then Juventus defender, the score.

It was 1-0 on Saturday for longer than was comfortable. Stephan El Shaarawy missed the sort of chance he took against Inter in one of De Rossi’s first games in charge, striking the post instead of the back of the net after Romelu Lukaku adeptly slipped him through on goal. Lazio then had a Daichi Kamada goal ruled out for offside and the minutes remaining began to feel like hours. “I asked the fourth official if the scoreboard was broken,” De Rossi joked. Lazio’s winner against Juventus in Tudor’s first game last weekend came in stoppage time and was a carbon copy of the equaliser their goalkeeper Ivan Provedel scored against Atletico Madrid earlier in the season. His replacement Christos Mandas went up to emulate him but to no avail.

The “revenge” De Rossi sought for Roma’s recent history in this fixture was obtained. When the full-time whistle finally came, he let out a roar and leapt into the arms of Valerio Cardini, Roma’s team manager. He tried as best he could to resist going under the Sud as he used to do in his playing days. De Rossi had done so after the penalty shootout win over Feyenoord in February and confessed to feeling “a little bit ashamed” at letting himself go. But it was a moment to cherish, a third act. De Rossi has lived this game as a player. He stood in the Sud in disguise in 2020 and “it’s every bit as good” to win as a coach, he said. It was a special day.

Across from the dugout in the Tribuna Tevere, the fans unfurled a choreography depicting Agostino Di Bartolomei. De Rossi named his son Noah but he’d thought long and hard about naming his boy Ago. A Roman like De Rossi. A captain like De Rossi, Monday would have been Di Bartolomei’s 59th birthday had he not taken his own life on the 10-year anniversary of Roma’s defeat against Liverpool in the 1984 European Cup final. To De Rossi’s right, the Sud rolled out a banner saying: “My only bride, my only love.” Those were the same words De Rossi had stitched into the armband he used to wear when he skippered the team.

Roma played in his image on Saturday. They resembled the tattoo on his calf, a road traffic sign showing a stick man launching himself into a sliding challenge. Pellegrini received a booking after taking out Matteo Guendouzi and Felipe Anderson in the same action. Angelino and Leandro Paredes put their bodies on the line. Paulo Dybala tracked back to his own byline and blocked crosses. He seemed to undergo the same transformation Lionel Messi experienced when Argentina played the Netherlands in the World Cup quarter-finals. Instead of cupping his ears at the opposition manager or saying: What are you looking at, Bobo!” he pulled out his shinpad for Guendouzi and showed him the picture printed on it. The Frenchman, who warmed the bench in the World Cup final, was confronted by an image of Dybala holding the trophy aloft in Lusail and planting a kiss on its golden surface. After the game Mancini creditably talked about the importance of showing your opponents respect. No sooner had he finished the interview than he was under the Sud, asking for a flag with Lazio’s colours and the silhouette of a rat on it. He then proceeded to run up and down a stretch of the Olimpico’s athletics track, waving it.

Paulo Dybala and Matteo Guendouzi had to be separated by the referee (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images)

Some will question how different this behaviour is from the gratuitous gamesmanship of the Mourinho era. But Roma now come to play as well as fight. Tudor remarked afterwards on Roma’s physicality and the number of second balls they won. But he also highlighted how “difficult it was to press them because the football they play avoids it”. As a former team-mate and midfielder who played in Argentina, De Rossi understands Paredes’ game better than Mourinho. He has found a way to get Pellegrini and Dybala in the same team. Then there’s the left side, where Angelino has proven a hit and El Shaarawy is playing his best football in a long time. It seems to have passed most people by that Roma are the team Luciano Spalletti is drawing on as much as Inter for his national team ahead of the Euros.

“I get to coach good players and every now and then they cover up my mistakes,” De Rossi humbly said. Before Saturday’s game Roma were outperforming their expected goals (xG) tally by a league-high 13.6 because of worldies from Pellegrini and Dybala. They have had five penalties in De Rossi’s time at the helm and last weekend, in Lecce, he drew comparisons with Mourinho for some mild complaints at not getting one. Some of Roma’s clean sheets — at Frosinone and at home to Brighton — have, by his own admission, also been fortunate. But the team is on a roll and that is in part because De Rossi is such a positive influence. He talks this team up instead of down. With the exception of Lukaku — two league goals in 2024 — he has unlocked its attacking potential and now Tammy Abraham is back, there’s potentially even more to come.

Ninth when De Rossi got the call from the Friedkins in January, Roma now reside in the fifth and final Champions League spot. Seventeen points off Juventus in January, the gap is down to four, which speaks to the rise of one team and the fall of another. Nicknamed Capitan Futuro as a player, De Rossi has been rebranded Mister Futuro. “I’m Mister Presente,” Roma’s caretaker manager said, diplomatically. The coach for the here and now. “I’m not thinking about the future.” Only about Thursday’s Europa League quarter-final against Milan. De Rossi is not getting ahead of himself. He wants to enjoy the moment. “Every now and then you need to stop, sit on the sofa, have a beer and few crisps.” For the rest of the weekend though, it will be Lazio who will be tasting salt and vinegar.

(Top photo: Silvia Lore/Getty Images)