AS Roma vs Cagliari: Late Burst Turns a Level Contest Into a 4-2 Win

AS Roma against Cagliari was far closer than the final score suggests. For 80 minutes the shot count and the expected goals told a story of two sides trading chances, and only a burst between the 85th and 87th minutes separated them on the scoreboard. Roma finished with 20 shots to Cagliari's 19, and the xG figures of 2.96 and 2.68 barely split them. This was a match Roma won by being sharper in the decisive minutes, not by smothering the visitors.

Cagliari struck first. M'Bala Nzola converted a penalty on 10 minutes, and Roma's response was immediate and well worked. Emanuele Lulli equalised on 15 and Niccolò Pisilli put the hosts ahead on 21, so three goals arrived inside 11 minutes. That frantic opening set the tone: Gian Piero Gasperini's 3-5-2 asked its wing-backs to push high and its two forwards to stretch Francesco Pisacane's 3-5-1-1, and the space that created for both sides explains why neither could settle.

Roma's 61% possession gave them the territory, but it did not translate into control. Both teams put eight shots on target, and the saves tell the same story: six for Roma's goalkeeper, Gollini, against four for his counterpart. Gollini's 7.9 rating reflects how often Cagliari got through, and his work kept a one-goal lead intact through a long second-half stretch in which Roma could not add a third. That is the quiet worry in an otherwise convincing result: a side sitting third on 21 points, with a 3-5-2 that commits so many men forward, left itself open to a counter.

Cagliari made Roma pay for that on 81 minutes. Daniel Maldini, who earned an 8.0 rating, scored to level the match at 2-2 in the 81st minute, and for a few minutes the visitors looked set to take something from the capital. The scoreline at that point was 3-2 to Roma only after the sequence that followed, but the Maldini goal is what briefly tilted momentum. Cagliari, ninth on 13 points, had the look of a side that could hold on.

They did not. Rodrigo Mora, the standout of the afternoon with an 8.2 rating, scored in the 85th minute, and Donyell Malen added the fourth in the 87th. Two goals in 120 seconds ended the contest, and it is Mora who deserves the credit as the player who decided it: his goal broke a deadlock that Cagliari's wing-back-heavy shape had made stubborn, and Malen's finish punished a visiting side still reeling. Juan Rodriguez's late yellow card on 90 minutes was a footnote to a defence that had run out of answers.

Kickwise's pre-match prediction favoured Roma, and the result matched it, though the margin flattered them. The underlying numbers describe an evenly contested match that Roma won through sharper finishing and a decisive late spell.