Gasperini sees belief, not just points, in Roma's wild 3-3 at Napoli
Roma came back from 3-2 down to draw at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, and Gian Piero Gasperini says the comeback matters more than the two points dropped.
Roma trailed Napoli 3-2 with eleven minutes left at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona and still finished level, Leonardo Balerdi heading in a Wesley cross in the 89th minute to make it 3-3. Gian Piero Gasperini told DAZN Italia afterwards that the result functions as, in his words, "another positive confidence booster" for his side.
Why Roma's build-up broke down early
Gasperini was explicit about the opening period: "Apart from the first half-hour, where Napoli were superior and we struggled playing out from the back, we already started to do better towards half-time." That admission points to a specific problem rather than a general one. Struggling to play out from the back for a sustained spell usually means the opponent's press is winning the duel for the first pass, forcing long clearances or turnovers in dangerous areas rather than clean progression through midfield.
Napoli's two early goals, Andre Frank Zambo Anguissa's bicycle kick and Scott McTominay's header, came while that pressure was at its height. Gasperini's account suggests Roma's response was not a change of system but a correction of execution: his players held their shape and their footballing identity rather than abandoning their approach under pressure. "The lads were not frenetic, they didn't panic, we maintained our positions and our style of football," he said, framing the recovery as a matter of defensive discipline rather than tactical overhaul.
The moments that decided the game went both ways
The match turned into a rapid exchange of transitions once it opened up. Matias Soulé and Balerdi scored twice in five minutes to level at 2-2, only for McTominay to restore Napoli's lead with a strike from outside the box soon after. Sequences like that typically expose whichever side fails to reorganise fastest after scoring or conceding, and Gasperini's own words acknowledge the danger: "that third Napoli goal could've destroyed us." That it did not, he argued, reflected conviction rather than fortune.
Substitutions shaped the finish. Balerdi, Rodrigo Molina and others introduced from the bench gave Roma what Gasperini called "fresh energy," and it was that renewed legs and sharper focus late on that produced the equaliser. Using bench impact to alter a game's rhythm in the final third of a match is itself a tactical lever, and Gasperini credited it directly for sustaining Roma's pressure when fatigue might otherwise have favoured Napoli.
Soulé was singled out for an "extraordinary performance," alongside Franck Ndicka, reinforcing that the comeback was built on individual quality as much as structural adjustment.
A pattern across Roma's toughest fixtures
Gasperini placed the Napoli draw alongside Roma's other two marquee results this season: a 2-2 with Inter and a scoreless draw at Como, played with ten men for most of the second half after a red card. "They are all very different matches, but in all three we felt that we were very competitive with the best in the league," he said, drawing a direct line between resilience shown in adverse circumstances across all three games.
He credited Balerdi and Marten de Roon specifically for the leadership they have brought since arriving, noting that Balerdi "knows football, understood the defensive movements very quickly, he has remarkable energy." A central defender signed late in the summer scoring twice in one match, including the equaliser, is the kind of outcome Gasperini pointed to as evidence the squad has settled quickly into its roles.
Gasperini also framed the result in terms of what it signals for fixtures still to come, arguing that matching Napoli's level, after the club won the Scudetto twice in recent seasons, gives his squad the belief to compete with anyone in Serie A. Asked about Massimiliano Allegri's red card and whether the two friends had crossed paths pitchside, Gasperini kept it light: "I hope he wasn't angry with me, I wasn't the one who sent him off!"
Roma leave Naples unbeaten in three of their hardest assignments this season, with Gasperini's own assessment making clear he sees the three points conceded as a secondary concern to the pattern of competitiveness his side has shown against the division's best.