Bryan Cristante Blames Poor Luck for Roma Dreadful Start

Roma midfielder Bryan Cristante believes ‘Lady Luck’ has turned her back on his side at the start of the 2023/24 Serie A season. Jose Mourinho’s side succumbed to a 2-1 defeat to Milan on Romelu Lukaku’s debut on Friday night.

Not even Mourinho’s return from a ten-day ban helped Roma bounce back from a two-game winless league start. Olivier Giroud and Rafael Leao fired Milan 2-0 up at the Stadio Olimpico before Leonardo Spinazzola’s injury-time strike salvaged some pride for out-of-sorts Giallorossi.

In addition to extending their woeful winless run against Milan to eight matches, Roma will head into the international break winless in their opening three top-flight outings for the first time since 2011/12. Before last night’s defeat, Mourinho’s side slumped to a 2-1 loss at Hellas Verona and shared the spoils with Salernitana in a 2-2 opening-day draw.

Despite a string of underwhelming results, it’s worth noting that Roma only faced eight shots on target in those three matches. Unfortunately for them, six of those eight attempts finished in the back of the net. Cristante didn’t waste the opportunity to bring it up during his post-game interview.

“Incidents are making the difference, we conceded six goals from just eight shots on target. Now we need to use the break for international duty to get ourselves back in shape and resume in the best way possible,” the Roma ace told DAZN, as relayed by Tuttomercatoweb.

“I don’t think we were lacking sharpness. We created a lot and were very unlucky so far this season. Perhaps we played less well today, but we know that we’ve got to do more to pick up points.“