Roma have conceded one goal all season, and Inter have scored 13

Serie A’s best defence plays its best attack at the Stadio Olimpico on Saturday night, and the two of them arrive on the same number of points. Roma have conceded one goal in four league matches. Inter have scored 13. Kick-off is 9.30pm IST.

Twelve points each, and a goal difference between them

Roma sit top with 12 points from 12, Inter are second on the same total, and only goal difference separates them. Gian Piero Gasperini’s side have scored 12 and given up one. Cristian Chivu’s have scored 13 and given up six. Nobody else in the division has won four out of four.

Roma’s start has been built on the thing Gasperini has always built on. One goal conceded in four matches is the sort of number that usually belongs to a side sitting deep, except this Roma are not doing that. They won at Torino on Monday with 14 shots to the hosts’ eight, most of them created inside the box, while Torino kept more of the ball and did nothing with it.

Donyell Malen has six of their 12 goals. A hat-trick against Fiorentina, two more at Lecce, and the opener in Turin. He has been in Italy since January.

Inter keep going two down and winning anyway

Chivu’s team have a stranger profile. Six goals conceded in four wins is not championship defending, and twice now they have had to dig themselves out. Napoli led them 2-0 on 5 September and lost 3-2. Udinese went 2-0 up inside 16 minutes at San Siro on the same Monday night, and Inter won 5-3 with Carlos Augusto, Niccolò Barella, Marcus Thuram, Francesco Pio Esposito and Ange-Yoan Bonny all scoring.

You can read that two ways. A team that keeps coming back from two down has serious depth and no fear, or a team that keeps going two down has a problem it has not fixed yet. Against a side that has conceded once all season, the second reading is the one that should worry Inter. There may not be a hole to climb out of at the other end.

The European week neither of them enjoyed

Both came back from the Champions League with something less than a win. Inter lost 2-1 at the Bernabéu on 8 September, Kylian Mbappé and Federico Valverde putting Real Madrid two up before Carlos Augusto pulled one back late. Roma drew 1-1 away at Fenerbahçe two nights after that, Bryan Cristante scoring from range in the 39th minute before Fenerbahçe levelled straight after the interval.

Gasperini has been open about where he thinks the two clubs stand. “Inter are the reference point for this league,” he said before the match, calling it “an opportunity for us to measure up against the best” and admitting there was “a big gap between the teams last season”. He also pointed out that Roma are playing three games in eight days, which is why Malen came off early in Turin.

The last one was not close

These teams last met at San Siro on 5 April, and Inter won 5-2. Lautaro Martínez scored twice on his return from a two-month absence, Hakan Calhanoglu hit one from more than 30 metres, and Roma’s two goals were footnotes on the day. That was the same Chivu side, more or less, against a Roma team that finished the season without a title challenge in it.

Roma have not won Serie A since 2001. Four wins in September proves nothing about May, and Gasperini knows the difference better than most, having spent nine years at Atalanta turning good starts into Champions League qualification rather than Scudetti. What Saturday will tell us is whether the defensive record is real or whether it has simply not been tested yet. Inter are the test.

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