Soulé, the heartbeat of Roma as the Napoli match turns on Balerdi's late goal
Matías Soulé was Roma's standout performer in a match against Napoli, with his close control and dribbling in tight spaces giving the side its most dangerous moments in the first half. The Argentine's runs down the flank and his willingness to track back when Napoli broke quickly stood out, and the writer argues his performance deserves credit regardless of the scoreboard. Soulé's best moment came with a stunning goal, a left-footed bending strike on a millimetre-perfect line. Just when it seemed the game was gone, he halved Napoli's lead, sounding the charge and turning the Maradona crowd's enthusiasm into a murmur of doubt, which became uncertainty and then genuine fear after Balerdi's goal. The writer insists that a Roma performance is judged by the team's overall play rather than individual moments of fortune, and that the result would not have diminished Soulé's display even had the game finished 3-2. The author's conclusion is that the decisive moments were ultimately settled by Balerdi, with the defensive failures to neutralise those episodes the real cause of the problem. Soulé's contribution, he argues, remains the thing worth saving from the match, whatever the context and final score.
