Roma’s Top-Four Push Continues With Crucial Trip to Parma

There is something comfortingly familiar (and disappointingly familiar) about where Roma find themselves as this season draws to a close. Champions League qualification is still dangling just close enough to inspire belief, yet just far enough away to remind supporters how many missed opportunities came before it. After last week’s emphatic 4-0 dismantling of Fiorentina, Gian Piero Gasperini’s side has dragged itself back into the conversation, sitting just one point behind fourth place with three matches left to play. The Giallorossi did what they needed to do. Now, as it seems like is always the case, they need a little help from elsewhere.

To make sure they can have even a shot at luck smiling on them, though, Roma needs to handle its own business in Parma. On paper, Sunday’s trip to the Stadio Ennio Tardini looks straightforward enough. Parma are comfortably in mid-table, safely removed from relegation danger and with little tangible left to fight for beyond pride. Roma, meanwhile, arrive with urgency, momentum, and a suddenly revitalized attack after putting four past Fiorentina. Gasperini himself made the stakes plain in his pre-match press conference: “We know that every match is decisive.” At this stage of the campaign, there is no room for dropped points if any Romanista still wants to dream of CL football.

Match Details

Date: May 10th

Kickoff: 18:00 CET/12:00 EDT

Venue: Ennio Tardini, Parma

Referee: Daniele Chiffi

But anyone who has followed this club for more than five minutes knows exactly how dangerous a fixture like this can become. Roma have made an annual tradition of turning straightforward late-season opportunities into exercises in collective anxiety and inevitable disappointment. A favored side against an opponent with little to play for? A clear path to applying pressure above them in the table? That’s exactly the sort of scenario that tends to produce ninety deeply uncomfortable minutes if it’s a Roma match played in April or May. Still, if Gasperini’s Roma truly are beginning to take shape, and if this recent surge is more than another false dawn, then this is the kind of match they simply have to win. Luck is still required to break into the top four; failure also must no longer come from their own hand.