Gasperini Transforms Roma into Title Contenders

Roma have started this season with a different edge, and the reason stands in the technical area: Gian Piero Gasperini. It has taken the new coach only a handful of games to turn a club used to drama and doubt into a side that suddenly looks sure of itself, aggressive, and ambitious.

This is not just a tactical tweak. It feels like a takeover of the entire sporting project.

Gasperini’s grip on Roma

From the touchline at the Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi in Verona on May 24, 2026, Gasperini’s gestures told their own story. Constant instructions, sharp corrections, relentless demands. Roma players no longer drift through phases of play; they are dragged into Gasperini’s structure.

Inside Trigoria, his influence already looks vast. The hierarchy has backed him with the kind of trust and latitude that few Roma coaches have enjoyed, even those with the profile of José Mourinho. Decisions on the pitch and off it increasingly orbit around his ideas. The squad has been bent to his will, not the other way round.

That shift matters. Roma have often been a club of competing powers: directors, coaches, star players, all pulling in slightly different directions. Gasperini’s early weeks suggest something closer to a single voice. His voice.

If that holds, the ceiling changes. Suddenly this is not just a team chasing a top-four place; it is one being shaped to hunt trophies.

Malen at the heart of the project

At the centre of that vision stands Donyell Malen. The Dutch striker has been handed a role that could define Roma’s season and, potentially, write his name into Serie A history.

Gasperini has long thrived with forwards who move constantly, stretch defences, and attack space with ferocity. Malen fits that profile. Under this coach, he is not just a finisher waiting in the box; he is the spearhead of an aggressive, high-tempo system that drags opponents into chaos and then punishes them.

The question now hangs over the campaign: how far can Gasperini push him?

Gonzalo Higuaín’s 36-goal Serie A record once looked untouchable, a freak season sealed in glass. Malen’s early form and the volume of chances Roma are generating under Gasperini have reopened the conversation. The service is there, the positioning is sharper, and the confidence is rising.

Is a genuine assault on that record realistic? At this stage of the season, it remains a towering target. Maintaining that scoring rhythm across an entire campaign, through winter, fatigue, and pressure, is something only the most ruthless strikers manage. Yet Gasperini has created the conditions where the idea no longer sounds fanciful. Malen is playing in a system designed to feed him, over and over again.

A new Roma, a bigger question

So the story of Roma’s start is not just about results. It is about power and purpose. Gasperini has stepped into the club and, in a matter of weeks, imposed a clarity that has often been missing in the capital. He commands the dressing room, shapes the squad, and now carries a level of authority that rivals or even surpasses his predecessors.

If that authority holds through the inevitable storms of a long season, Roma’s ambitions will not stop at a top-four finish. They could be looking at a title challenge built around a coach in total control and a striker chasing one of the most daunting records in Italian football.

The early signs say Roma have both. The rest of the league is about to discover whether this is just a fast start—or the beginning of something far more serious.