Inter’s Roberto Mancini says Roma will have their Serie A mindset ready

The Uefa Champions League has all sorts of hidden hazards.

Ask Roberto Mancini, back in Serie A with Inter Milan after six years away, some of them spent flummoxed by Europe's elite competition.

Ask Roma, who have been absent from the elite competition for a while and this season encountered new pitfalls on what has been an eventful return to it.

Roma drew 1-1 with CSKA Moscow on Tuesday, which puts the Italians into a fiendish three-way tussle on the last group match day to determine what their involvement will be in Europe in the new year.

When CSKA’s Vasiliy Berezutski scored his 93rd-minute goal on Tuesday, Roma would have forgiven the feeling their night away had lasted marginally too long.

Later reports had some players extending the evening and involved in a dispute with Russian paparazzi, who wanted to take pictures of them outside the sort of establishment footballers would rather not be seen at in the hours they would normally be tucked up in bed.

Roma’s captain, Francesco Totti, was not in the late-night party.

He has been with Roma long enough to know that a section of their support-base feels badly disposed to any suggestion of indiscipline.

Whatever the facts of the recreational outing in Moscow, should things go wrong against Inter tonight, chants linked to the story will probably be heard in the Stadio Olimpico.

Roma’s pursuit of the league title has the vast majority of loyalists onside, but there is a frustration that, for all the thrill of some of Roma’s attacking football, and their capacity to blitz opponents quickly in the opening periods of games, the failure to hold an advantage in key games is damaging them.

Juventus sit three points ahead of Rudi Garcia’s team in the table thanks to the 86th-minute goal Juve scored when the top two in Serie A met last month.

The even later strike at CSKA denied Roma the cushion they wanted to take into the denouement of their Champions League pool matches.

Mancini, who earned his first win of his second spell at Inter on Thursday in the Europa League, does not anticipate Roma having debilitating after-effects from their Russian expedition.

“I don’t think it will make a difference,” he said, “they are back in a Serie A mindset now and in a title race they have a real chance of winning.”

What of Mancini returning to a stadium where, for Lazio, he was once a much-loved player and later a respected head coach?

He will keep his cool, he promised.

“I know what it is to come to this ground as the enemy,” he said yesterday.

“I lived in Roma and was a Lazio player, but I never thought of it with particularly high emotions.”

His Inter, who drew the Milan derby last Sunday on Mancini’s comeback to the club, should show the same even temperament, he said. “We must be motivated, but have the right mentality and keep together as a team.

“This is a ‘classic’ fixture in Serie A and we are up against a Roma who are well above us in the table, and have the confidence that comes from being in a stable, long-term project.”

Above all, warned Mancini, Inter must beware the early noise from the crowd and Roma’s habit of biting hard in the opening 15 minutes.

“We have to be alert from the kick off,” he said.

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