Romavs
AtalantaFor 89 minutes, Atalanta were the better team. They just weren't the winning one.
Roma came into Saturday's Serie A fixture at the Olimpico with five straight wins and all the momentum a perfect run of form can buy. Atalanta, sitting on four points from their last five, had nothing to lose and played like it — sitting deep, staying compact, and making Roma's 66 percent possession feel like a lot of noise leading nowhere. Nine saves from the Atalanta goalkeeper told the whole story of the first half and most of the second.
Then Éderson broke the deadlock in the 47th minute, and suddenly the numbers mattered even less. Atalanta had one shot on target worth remembering, and they'd used it.
The Long Wait
Roma threw everything at the problem. Thirty-nine shots. Fourteen corners. A passing accuracy of 90 percent on 612 attempts. All of it bouncing off a defense that had clearly done its homework. The Olimpico grew restless in ways you could feel — the crowd pushing, the team pressing, neither quite finding the breakthrough.
With six minutes left, it looked like one of those nights where the stats would mock you in the morning.
Two Minutes That Changed Everything
The 89th minute. Mario Hermoso, of all people, rose to meet a delivery from Matías Soulé and headed Roma level. The Olimpico exhaled. Atalanta, who had been so disciplined for so long, suddenly looked like a team running on fumes.
Three minutes into stoppage time, Soulé got his own. Paulo Dybala slipped the ball through, Soulé finished, and the ground erupted. ¡Ala gran púchica! — from a goal down with one minute to play to winning the match in injury time. You don't script it cleaner than that.
Atalanta's night ended in the worst possible way: Gianluca Gaetano picked up a red card in the 90+7th minute, long after the match was decided, adding insult to a collapse that will sting for days.
Raoul Bellanova had already been booked in the 84th, so Atalanta's discipline frayed right when they needed it most.
The Verdict
Our pre-match read made Roma the favorite at 57 percent, and the final scoreline backs that up — even if the path there was anything but comfortable.
Cabal, this was Roma at their most stubborn. They were outplayed for long stretches, never truly found their rhythm against a well-organized Atalanta block, and still walked away with the three points. That kind of resilience is what separates a five-game winning streak from a flash in the pan.
For Atalanta, the question is what to make of a performance that deserved more. They were compact, dangerous on the counter, and led until the final minute. En qué clavo se encontraron — undone not by a tactical failure but by two moments of individual quality from Soulé and the cruel math of a stoppage-time collapse. There will be harder nights to shake off than this one.
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