Gasperini Transforms Roma: Ambitions Rise

Roma have not just changed coach. They’ve changed gear.

Gian Piero Gasperini has wasted no time stamping his mark on the Giallorossi, and the early weeks of the season already feel different in the capital. The team looks sharper, braver, more aggressive between the lines. You can see his fingerprints on every phase of play.

Lorenzo Bettoni and Wayne Girard have taken a deep dive into this new Roma, dissecting how quickly Gasperini has asserted himself and how far this project can really go.

A Coach With Unusual Power

Inside Trigoria, Gasperini’s influence is growing fast. The sense is clear: this is his team, his structure, his decisions.

Bettoni and Girard explore just how much authority the former Atalanta boss appears to wield, suggesting he may already hold more sway than any recent Roma coach, even José Mourinho. That is no small comparison. Mourinho arrived as a superstar, a serial winner. Gasperini, by contrast, is building power through ideas, through a defined playing identity and through the trust he’s quickly earned.

What does that mean for Roma’s ambitions? It points to a club willing to back a long-term football vision, not just a name on the bench. A club ready to let a coach shape recruitment, roles and even the hierarchy of the dressing room.

If this continues, Roma will not just be chasing a top-four finish. They will be trying to crash the Scudetto conversation.

Malen, Goals and a Record in Sight

One name sits at the heart of that dream: Donyell Malen.

Bettoni and Girard turn the spotlight on the Dutch forward and the partnership he is forming with his new coach. Gasperini has a history of supercharging attacking talent, and the question is obvious: can he do it again?

Malen’s movement, speed and eye for goal make him a perfect fit for Gasperini’s vertical, high-tempo football. The show examines how the coach could unlock the striker’s full potential, putting him in positions to finish moves rather than simply chase them.

That leads to the boldest topic of all: Gonzalo Higuaín’s extraordinary 36-goal Serie A record. Could Malen, in this system, even dream of challenging it?

Ambition or Fantasy?

It’s early. The season is still stretching its legs, and any record talk comes with that caveat. Bettoni and Girard weigh up how realistic such a target is, balancing Malen’s qualities with the physical and mental demands of a full Serie A campaign under a coach who asks everything from his forwards.

Yet the fact the conversation exists at all says plenty about the mood around Roma.

Under Gasperini, they might not only have a genuine title challenger in the making. They might also be nurturing a striker capable of rewriting one of the toughest records in Italian football.