Having "sacked" Roma with an imperious 7-1 Champions League drubbing at the Olympic Stadium in Rome last night, German champions Bayern Munich this morning did the decent thing. Moving on from the Olimpico to the Vatican, they dropped in on Pope Francis, offering him not only a Bayern shirt with the name "Franziskus" but also a €1 million euro charitable donation to be used as the Pope sees fit.
It is unlikely, though, that Bayern’s visit to the Pope will do much to ease the pain of Roma fans as they attempt to come to terms with Roma’s second 7-1 Champions League drubbing following a similar defeat by Manchester United in 2007. Given the side’s current good league form and given a 5-1 win over CSKA Moscow and a 1-1 away draw with Manchester City in their two previous Champions League games this season, the Roma fans had begun to feel optimistic about this campaign.
So much so that the sold out Stadio Olimpico registered an all time high box-office of €3.7 million as more than 70,000 people flocked to see the game. Roma dreams and expectations, however, lasted less than 10 minutes. That was all the time it took for Dutchman Arjen Robben to dance past Roma's Ashley Cole and slot home a superb opener.
When Roma then failed to equalise immediately, following a superb save by Bayern and Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, one had the sense that this would not be Roma’s night and 14 minutes later, Mario Götze had made it 2-0 following a clever one-two with Thomas Müller. To some extent, at that point it was already “game over”.
By half-time, with the score 5-0 for Bayern, spectators could have been forgiven for thinking they were watching a re-run of the Brazil v Germany World Cup semi-final from the summer. Every time Bayern attacked, they seemed to score, whilst Roma last night looked every bit as forlorn and confused as Felipe Scolari’s Brazil side did last July.
Speaking after the game, the ever elegant Bayern coach, Pep Guardiola, was careful to avoid any sort of triumphalist tones:
“This was an accident, one of those things that can happen. We had a bit of luck, we got two quick goals and that made it much easier for us . . . One thing I will tell you is that it won’t be like this when we meet in Munich in two weeks time . . .”
Until last night, Bayern’s Champions League campaign this season had hardly been of the pyrotechnic variety with two less than convincing 1-0 wins at home to Manchester City and away to CSKA Moscow. Guardiola has an explanation, however: “We were in bad condition, with injuries and fitness problems, before the Manchester City game . . . and as for Moscow, well I tell you no team will find it easy to go there and take points . . . ”
In that context, Manchester City’s 2-2 away draw yesterday with CSKA represented the only good news of the night for Roma who, remarkably, are still second in the group behind Bayern.
The Roma rout proved to be a field day for headline writers with "The Sacking Of Rome" and "Kaputt Mundi" proving popular. Rome daily La Repubblica however was perhaps more accurate with a headline which read: "Roma, This Is A Nightmare, Historic Humiliation".
Guardiola’s opposite number, Rudi Garcia, offered a “mea culpa”, blaming himself for the setback, saying:
“This was my fault, I got things wrong, we defended badly. . . When you play Bayern, you expect a slap in the face and we got it”.
