Roma-Villarreal: Playing for Pride

Villarreal are in Roma to take on AS Roma in what should be a fairly meaningless second leg of their round of 32 Europa League matchup. Roma’s goalfest in Vila-real pretty much ended all drama in this tie—if Roma score, we’d need five goals to go through. We haven’t been in this position since Porto beat us 5-1 in the semis in 2011, and then we had the second leg at home (and we won it, and could have won it by more as I recall). So this is really a match to regain some pride.

The question is what sort of lineup we’ll use, since we do have a big home match with Real Madrid at the Cerámica on Sunday. Everyone available has made the trip, except Nicola Sansone whose right hamstring is bothering him:

• Goalkeepers: Asenjo, Andrés and Barbosa.
• Defenders: Mario, José Ángel, Jaume Costa, Álvaro, Bonera, Rukavina, Musacchio and Víctor Ruiz.
• Midfielders: Bruno, Rodrigo, Trigueros, Roberto Soriano, Jonathan dos Santos, Cheryshev and Samu Castillejo.

Strikers: Soldado, Bakambu, Santos Borré and Adrián López.

The other news is a delegation from Villarreal will be meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday; exactly who will be in the group to meet him, we don’t know. Pope Francis is of course a big football fan, and being an Argentine I am sure he associates Villarreal with the magnificence of Riquelme....