Lazio 1, Roma 1: Soulé Super Strike Saves Point for Giallorossi

The dropped points will come back to haunt them, but Roma got top-notch performances from Mile Svilar and Matías Soulé in today’s derby draw.

Thanks to Claudio Ranieri’s 2025 masterstroke, the Giallorossi have gradually reintegrated themselves into the Champions League chase—a feat that felt damn near impossible just last month. While they haven’t exactly been overwhelming the competition, Ranieri’s squad has demonstrated enough determination and defensive savvy to compete with any club in the league, scratching and clawing their way back into the CL conversation.

In our analysis of Roma’s path back to the Champions League, we broke down the club’s remaining eight fixtures into three distinct categories: the must-wins against lesser clubs, the fixtures where they could afford to drop points, and the six-pointers against their direct rivals that could very well decide the race. Roma erred slightly in the first of those four six-pointers, drawing Juventus at home in a tense 1-1 fixture, adding further importance to today’s Derby della Capitale against Lazio.

With nearly a full squad at his disposal, Ranieri and Roma had a slight advantage over their Stadio Olimpico co-tenants, who were carrying tired legs from their Europa League trip to Norway against Bodø/Glimt. However, rather than taking it to their fatigued foes, Roma came out sluggish, spending more time chasing their opponents than creating chances in the attacking third.

Motivated by the sky blue side of the city, Lazio was more aggressive in the early phases and nearly opened the scoring in the seventh minute when Gustav Isaksen found former Roma defender Alessio Romagnoli in the center of the box from a free-kick, only to be denied by a stunning fingertip save from Mile Svilar.

Isaksen called his own number 15 minutes later, twisting and turning his way into the Roma box before testing Svilar with a snapped shot at the near post. The Danish forward had another go at goal in the 36th minute, aiming for the top corner from the edge of the box only to be denied by Svilar, who made another miraculous save to keep Roma in the match.

While Roma was fortunate to keep Lazio off the scoreboard in the first half, thanks almost exclusively to Svilar’s heroics, they could only keep Lazio down for so long…

With the second half barely underway, Lazio earned a free kick in the left channel. In a sick twist of irony, two former Roma players, Luca Pellegrini and Alessio Romagnoli, teamed up to put the Giallorossi in a 1-0 hole after Pellegrini found Romagnoli unmarked in the middle of the area. This time, Svilar couldn’t quite corral Romagnoli’s header, giving the evil side of the Eternal City a leg up in the second half.

Roma nearly struck back in the 54th minute when Gianluca Mancini got on the end of a Lorenzo Pellegrini corner, craning his neck and flinging the ball toward the left post. With his momentum carrying him away from the goal, Mancini didn’t get a clean strike on the ball but put enough mustard on it to force Lazio keeper Christos Mandas into a fingertip save the post.

With time (and hope) wearing thin, the Giallorossi leveled the match thanks to an exquisite bit of skill from Matías Soulé, who redirected an Alexis Saelemaekers one-timed pass into the back of the net—well, off the crossbar and then into the back of the net.

As impressive as this strike was, notice Soulé calling for the ball before Saelemaekers even lifted his head—excellent positional and situational awareness from the young winger, who quickly scored a goal-of-the-week candidate to boost Roma’s spirits for the final push.

The final 30 minutes unfolded in typical derby fashion: clutching/grabbing, controversial non-calls, near bench-clearing brawls, and more anxiety-inducing moments than we could handle. While Roma never genuinely threatened to win the match, Svilar once again saved the day, making a sensational double save—first on Evan Ndicka, who would have scored a back-breaking own goal, and then on Boulaye Dia, who had a chance to poke home the rebound maybe a yard away from the goal line.

Lazio had a pair of near-misses on late setpieces, but thanks to Svilar’s heroics and Soulé’s stunning strike, Roma salvaged a point in the season’s final derby.