Roma's injury crisis hands Castro and Mora their chance against De Rossi's Genoa
A Champions League collapse has stripped Roma of key attackers for Daniele De Rossi's emotional return to the Olimpico with Genoa.
Roma go into matchday 7 against Genoa with a team reshaped by absence rather than choice, after injuries and a suspension cleared several first-team places ahead of kickoff at the Stadio Olimpico, Football Italia reports.
The context is Wednesday's Champions League collapse against Real Madrid, a game Roma led 3-1 before conceding three near-identical corner-kick goals late on to lose 4-3. Paulo Dybala and Manu Koné both suffered muscular injuries in that match and join Mile Svilar and Bryan Cristante, already unavailable, on the sidelines.
Donyell Malen adds to the list, suspended following his red card in the goalless draw with Como. That leaves Santiago Castro to lead the line, flanked by Rodrigo Mora and Matias Soulé, with Niccolò Pisilli pushed into midfield to cover the gaps. Gianluca Mancini is short of full fitness and Nahuel Molina has been rested, while Pierluigi Gollini starts in goal against the club that once developed him.
De Rossi's return carries personal weight
Genoa arrive with a coach and a forward both steeped in Roma's history. Daniele De Rossi takes his side back to the Olimpico, with Stephan El Shaarawy, another former Roma player, in the squad for what is described as an emotional occasion for both men.
Genoa needed it. They had taken just one point from their opening five league matches before turning things around with a 2-1 win over Fiorentina. De Rossi is without Alex Amorim, Lorenzo Venturino, Djibril Sow, Franz-Ethan Meichtry and Lorenzo Colombo, so Junior Messias and Milutin Osmajic are tasked with leading the attack instead.
Tommaso Baldanzi adds a further subplot, facing the Roma side that still owns his registration as a loan player at Genoa. His involvement against his parent club sits alongside the De Rossi and El Shaarawy storylines as the night's personal threads running through an otherwise injury-dictated team sheet.
The shape tells its own story
Both sides have set up with three central defenders, four players across midfield and two attacking players just behind a lone striker. For Roma that means Balerdi, Ndicka and Koulierakis screening Gollini, with Lulli and Rensch providing width and Pisilli alongside Marten De Roon in the centre. Genoa mirror the structure, with Ellertsson and Puczka pushing on either side of Wiafe and Frendrup.
That symmetry matters because it determines where the game is won in the wide areas. With both teams relying on wing-backs rather than orthodox full-backs or wingers, the space between the lines becomes the contested zone, and it is there that Mora and Soulé will look to combine with Castro, while Messias and El Shaarawy try to do the same for Genoa in behind Osmajic.
Roma's makeshift front three lacks the individual craft that Dybala or Malen would ordinarily supply, which puts more weight on Castro's hold-up play and on Pisilli's distribution from a deeper role than he is used to occupying.
Form lines going into the match
Roma's recent league results show a side that had already started to stutter before the Madrid defeat: draws with Como and Inter either side of wins over Torino, Atalanta and Lecce. Genoa's run reads more sharply, with defeats to Parma, Como and Lazio and a draw with Frosinone preceding the win over Fiorentina that lifted the mood before this trip to Rome.
Kickoff was set for 19:45 UK time, 20:45 CEST, with the match forming part of a matchday 7 programme that also included Bologna against Inter. For Roma, the immediate task is absorbing Wednesday's late collapse while fielding a side missing five senior players through injury or suspension. For Genoa, the Fiorentina win offered the first sign that De Rossi's rebuilding work is taking hold, and a result at the Olimpico against the club where his career began would extend that momentum further.