The walking wounded came, they saw and they so nearly conquered the warriors from across the shores. They were true gladiators, true Romans. What did I expect with half the team on the treatment table, what did I hope for with De Rossi suspended and a limping Totti? Did I expect a crooked Juan, or a struggling Pizzaro to start? What more could have I asked from a hugely unproven and untested defender making his first champions league start? I could go on and on, and if truth be told, I expected them to falter, and yet hoped for the Romans to show up.
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\nBut they did not falter. They belied me, they exceeded the faintest of my expectations and continued to do so for over 120 minutes. This was a performance to be proud of, a performance to be recorded in the annals of history, a performance to remember and cherish. This was one of those performances where the result was inconsequential.
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\nDid they deserve more? Yes they did! A kid making his second champions league appearance had his more accomplished counterpart in his back pocket (Motta vs. Clichy). A debutatnt (Diamoutene) had an accomplished champion (Van Persie) shackled. A truly good player was reborn (Riise as centre back), an injured soldier gave us the early goal that we wanted (Juan) and a legend walking on crutches inspired us all (Totti). And a man kicked, pushed and repeatedly fouled just refused to say no, he kept coming back (Pizzaro).
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\nBut we had to bow out, because in life there are no happy endings like fairy tales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The walking wounded came, they saw and they so nearly conquered the warriors from across the shores. They were true gladiators, true Romans. What did I expect with half the team on the treatment table, what did I hope for with De Rossi suspended and a limping Totti? Did I expect a crooked Juan, or… Continue reading Roma …<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[85,76],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","category-sports","tag-football","tag-roma","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s34yOJ-roma","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/segfault.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}