Zaniolo and Koopmeiners: how they tear Rome and Atalanta apart

Massimo Cecchini – Andrea Elefante

September 18
– Milan

There is a moment that may be the right one. The ball arrives, you control it and around you there is that empty space that, Aristotelianically, you want to fill. Here, at that point the ideal solution is created to cause the tear to arise: the situation – according to the Treccani dictionary – in which “suddenly one strives or rushes into action”. It is to mix tactics and cages, and in this fundamental Nicolò Zaniolo and Teun Koopmeiners today could lecture: how to surprise the opponent’s defenses.

The last of the “Fab Four”

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Needless to say, after the shoulder injury that kept him out for four days, the Giallorossi striker can’t wait to make up for lost time. Of the so-called “Magic Square” that had made the fans dream so much in the summer, it is the last one missing from the appointment with the goal, already found by Dybala, Abraham and Pellegrini. That it makes Nicolò melancholy is evident, and it was also understood at the moment of the substitution in the Cup, Thursday against Hjk Helsinki. But the season is still in its early stages and everything can still be produced. For this reason, even the failure to call up the national team – which he regrets – was welcomed with the spirit of patience of those who know how the management of his recovery is important to both Roma and the blue staff. For the rest, the extraordinary feeling that is characterizing the Zaniolo-Mourinho relationship is a bit of the litmus test of the moment, given that the Special One says of his player: “Nicolò has characteristics that no one has in our squad. We missed his tears. Luckily he is back now ”. Atalanta has already been warned.

Undisputed owner

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Roma too, however. “Where you put it, Teun travels”, Gasperini summed up not long ago and Koopmeiners’ walk towards the opponent’s goal is hardly a replacement. His desk mate, Marten De Roon, told how Koop, compared to Freuler, attacks not only more, but much more suddenly: for his gashes he often counts on the surprise effect. Also thanks to the coverage of his national team mate (both called up), the only other Nerazzurri – Musso aside – to have played six games and all from 90 ‘. Because Koop is now doing great again: like many others he had finished last season in decline, partly due to fatigue. The one who in a very short time had convinced Gasp to immediately give him a starting position is back. Which this year is even more indisputable.

It does it in three

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Teun “travels”, therefore: that is, he runs, he crashes, he decides. Often tearing. The numbers do not lie: more than once it is the Nerazzurri who makes the odometer go more, who plays more balls, who wins more duels as a percentage. When it is said, a total midfielder: he is everywhere, he does a bit of everything, he does three. As a low median, Teun offers coverage, transition thanks to the balls recovered with the body and the sense of position, but also geometries: his razor-sharp throw is an important solution to open the game and change it by overturning the front of the offensive action. As an added attacking midfielder, where Gasperini sends him from time to time, he adds an opportunity to gain meters towards the area. The new version is the added “striker”: four goals (and an assist) in six games, or as many as he had scored in 43 Nerazzurri matches up to the one against Torino. Two on a penalty and two giving confidence to that left that deserves to be used much more. He is the first to have to convince himself of this, and he seems to be on the right track: his ease of shooting can become a sentence both for set pieces and for solutions from outside, especially useful in certain “closed” matches. Those that last year for Atalanta had become a kind of via crucis. In his last two Dutch seasons with Az Alkmaar, before arriving in Bergamo, for Koop scoring more than 15 goals of the season (16 and 17) had become a rule: Gasp would be satisfied with even a dozen.