AS Roma dismantled visiting Fiorentina 4-0 at the Olimpico on Monday evening, and the match was effectively decided by a 21-minute passage in the first half during which Gian Gasperini's side scored three times without reply.
Roma defender Gianluca Mancini opened the scoring in the 13th minute, assisted by midfielder Niccolò Pisilli. Four minutes later, Roma midfielder Wesley doubled the lead with Hermoso providing the assist. The visitors had barely absorbed that blow when Roma defender Hermoso — already credited with the assist on the second goal — became a scorer himself in the 34th minute, converting a pass from midfielder Manu Koné to make it 3-0. Three goals in 21 minutes, spanning from the 13th to the 34th minute, and Fiorentina's evening was already beyond retrieval.
Paolo Vanoli's Fiorentina side responded at half-time with a triple substitution — Riccardo Braschi for Jack Harrison, Fabiano Parisi for Albert Guðmundsson, and Pietro Comuzzo for Marin Pongračić, who had collected a yellow card in the 25th minute. The changes produced no visible shift in the contest. Pisilli, who had assisted the opener, completed the scoring in the 58th minute with a goal of his own, assisted by Roma forward Donyell Malen, to make it 4-0. That goal is worth dwelling on: it confirmed that Roma's control was not merely a product of an early rush but a sustained dominance across both halves.
Pisilli was the thread running through Roma's performance. The midfielder assisted Mancini's opener in the 13th minute, then waited until the second half to add his own name to the scoresheet. Two direct contributions to the final scoreline from a central midfield position, bookending the match, is the kind of output that defines a player's role in a winning performance rather than merely decorating it. Gasperini's Roma have now scored seven goals across their last three matches while conceding just once — a defensive and attacking coherence that makes Pisilli's double involvement all the more significant.
Fiorentina's problems ran deeper than the scoreline alone. The visitors arrived at the Olimpico having collected just two points from their last three matches, with a single goal scored in that span. That fragility was exposed immediately. Pongračić's yellow card in the 25th minute — while his side were already two goals down — added pressure to a back line that was already struggling, and his subsequent withdrawal at the interval was one of three enforced changes Vanoli made in search of a response. The second-half substitutes Parisi and Giovanni Fabbian both collected yellow cards or contributed little to change the match's direction. Fiorentina managed no goals and no meaningful threat; their attacking figures of Guðmundsson and Harrison were both removed at the break without having altered the contest.
Roma's form across the last three matches — seven points from a possible nine, seven goals scored, one conceded — represents a sharp upward curve from the side that conceded five against Inter earlier in April. The 4-0 result here is the sharpest expression of that recovery. Fiorentina, by contrast, have taken two points from their last three, scoring once and conceding five; this defeat extends a sequence that suggests a team running low on attacking resource and defensive cohesion simultaneously.
A month from now, this match will be remembered as the afternoon Pisilli both created and finished Roma's performance — and as the evening Fiorentina's recent stagnation found its most emphatic punishment.