Italian Serie A
2025-10-26 - Sassuolo vs AS Roma
A Sports Betting Pick by Cafa
Italy Serie A - Round 8
Mapei Stadium – Città del Tricolore, Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, Italy (21,525)
Sunday, 26 October 2025, 15:00 CET
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Sassuolo Team News
Sassuolo is a direct counter-attacking side that found its groove after it took them a few rounds to adapt to the pace and the demands of the Serie A once again. They can now seemingly comfortably soak up pressure as they constantly have their sights set on the open field up front, where they'll launch their swift counter attacks.
This game plan, obviously, works best against sides that leave that space open, and does not work very well when the opponent refuses to go forward with too many players, such as Lecce did in the 0-0 against Sassuolo last week. Lecce only attacks with four players, five is considered risky by their standards, and when there's five already, the remaining five stay back.
Sassuolo is a similar team, the offensive trio always goes forward, and then a maximum of two will join in. It's all about how many bodies you put behind or in front of the ball. It's not that Sassuolo is particularly good at defending, they just keep the players behind the ball.
This is expected to cause all sorts of problems to Roma.
Roma Team News
Roma, as we all know by now, has the classic problem of big name sides that don't follow through with world class players. Everyone defends against them because that's the only thing that makes sense, yet Roma doesn't have the world class players to unlock that kind of a defence.
A noticeable trend is that Roma's matches finish with exactly one goal, 1-0 or 0-1, as Roma either manages to score that one goal they're looking for, or concedes a counter attack and then doesn't manage to do anything.
Probable Lineups
Sassuolo (4-3-3): Muric - Walukiewicz, Idzes, Romagna, Doig - Vrancx, Matic, Kone - Berardi, Pinamonti, Lauriente. Coach Grosso.
Roma (3-4-2-1): Svilar - Celik, Mancini, Ndicka - Rensch, Kone, Cristante, Wesley - Soule, Bailey - Dybala. Coach Gasperini.
The latest idea to make Roma an offensive power seems to be to field Dybala as the false nine as Soule does the creative stuff. We've seen it before, it didn't work back then, it won't work now.
The Betting Market
Roma is a 1.85 favourite and this is an understandable price. To win this bet, you'd likely need Roma to not concede. It's difficult to expect two goals from this side, which is what they'll need if Sassuolo scores.
Under 2.5 Goals is the favoured outcome at 1.73, while Both Teams To Score: NO is priced at 1.80. There is perhaps some value to be had in the YES option for 1.95.
The Betting Verdict
This Roma is struggling to score and, more often than not, will score exactly one goal. They were even left scoreless against Torino that did nothing else than defend deep. As everyone at Roma is aware of this, they made it their business to keep clean sheets.
Sassuolo won't mind. They too want a 1-0 win here, as they don't want to put themselves in a situation where they have to find an opening twice or more.
Most likely, this game will be 0-0 for a long time, then Sassuolo will score out of the blue, and then Roma will huff and puff until the final minute trying to get an equalizer.
The Statistics :
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The Pick :
Sassuolo 1-1 Roma
