Malen has six goals in four rounds, and Roma have conceded one all season

Torino had more of the ball on Monday night in Turin. Roma had Donyell Malen, and that settled it.

The Dutchman scored in the 40th minute, Niccolo Pisilli added a second in the third minute of stoppage time, and Roma left with a 2-0 win, a fourth victory from four Serie A matches and top spot in the table. Gian Piero Gasperini’s side have 12 points from 12, the same as Inter, and sit above them on goal difference.

Six goals in four games, and only two Roma players have started like this

Malen now has six league goals this season. He opened with a hat-trick against Fiorentina, added two more against Lecce the following weekend, drew a blank against Atalanta, and then got the breakthrough at Torino.

Six in the first four rounds of a Serie A season puts him in company almost nobody at this club has kept. Only Pedro Manfredini, who scored seven in 1960-61, and Francesco Totti, who also managed six in 2001-02, have started a Roma campaign this well. Malen has been in Italy for eight months.

Aston Villa had paid Borussia Dortmund an initial 21 million pounds for him in January 2025 and loaned him to Roma twelve months later, for a fee of around 1.7 million. He scored 15 goals in 20 appearances on that loan, which triggered an obligation to buy once Roma qualified for Europe. The permanent deal cost roughly 21.6 million pounds and runs to June 2030. On current evidence that is one of the cheaper pieces of business in Serie A.

Torino kept the ball and did nothing with it

The hosts finished with 53 per cent possession and three shots on target. Roma had 14 attempts to Torino’s seven and won the corner count 8-1, which is roughly what a game looks like when one side is content to defend a goalless scoreline and the other keeps arriving in the box.

Malen had already headed over from Mario Hermoso’s cross inside the opening ten minutes. Paulo Dybala headed a free chance wide from 12 yards. Torino’s best moment came when Giovanni Simeone ran through the offside trap, only for Mile Svilar to close the angle and block his attempted dink, and Emanuele Lulli then cleared the bar with an acrobatic volley.

One goal conceded in four matches

The scoring is the headline, but Roma’s defensive record is the more unusual number. They have conceded once all season, to Ederson in the 2-1 win over Atalanta on 5 September, a game Roma turned around with goals from Mario Hermoso in the 90th minute and Matias Soule in the 93rd. Monday was their third clean sheet in four rounds. Twelve scored, one against, in a league where Inter have scored 13 and shipped six.

This is Gasperini’s second season in charge. His first ended with Roma out of the Europa League at Bologna’s hands in March and finishing behind Inter, who won the league and the Coppa Italia under Cristian Chivu. The version now top of Serie A looks like a side that has finally settled into the way he wants it to play.

Inter on Saturday

Roma host Inter on Saturday, 19 September, and it is already the fixture of the season so far: first against second, both unbeaten, both on 12 points, separated by four goals of difference. The reigning champions put five past Udinese on Monday after going 2-0 down inside 16 minutes, which tells you they can score against anyone and that the back line is not yet convincing.

Roma will take that. A defence that has conceded once in a month against an attack that keeps leaving its door open is as close to a fair fight as Serie A gets right now.

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