Player Focus: Gervinho - From Figure of Fun to Fan Favourite

Before really getting into his Tuesday column in La Repubblica back in early December, Gabriele Romagnoli had a confession to make. “I love Gervinho,” he wrote. “I will not be impartial. It’s necessary to write it with a heart between the subject and the direct object like in the NY logo…

“I am not a Romanista and I never succumbed to the ecstatic aesthetics of Garrincha, George Best or Gigi Meroni. Rather, it’s a sort of literary passion: the kind that makes you prefer Yanez to Sandokan [the protagonists of Emilio Salgari’s 19th century pirate novels] or Sancho Panza to Don Quixote. With poetic license, this is Gervinho, he’s a creature of ‘Gervantes’: a dreamer-squire, who drags the indolent hero beyond the limits of his fantasy.”

Reading that, it’s fair to say Gervinho has found an appreciation in Italy that he never did in England. His No.27 shirt is the third bestseller at the Roma store. He is a favourite among the ultras stood in the Curva Sud, who have nicknamed him Er Tendina or Curtains because of how his hair hangs from his head parted like drapes.

There was justifiable scepticism when he joined of course. Gervinho touched down at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, an €8m signing from Arsenal, just as Dani Osvaldo and Erik Lamela, the club’s top scorers from last season, went the other way, one bound for Southampton, the other for Tottenham. “We lost 31 goals with their sales,” Rudi Garcia, Roma’s new coach, later reflected. Expecting Gervinho to make up for some of that shortfall seemed like folly.

He had become a figure of fun over the last couple of years at the Emirates. And that hadn’t escaped the attention of Roma’s director of sport Walter Sabatini. Still, Garcia insisted. As revealed in his recently published autobiography Tous les chemins ménent à Rome [All roads lead to Rome], one of the conditions he demanded before taking the job was a say in transfer strategy and no more so was that the case than with Gervinho. “I wouldn’t have signed him for any other coach,” Sabatini candidly admitted to Sky Italia.

No such doubts ever crossed Garcia’s mind. A member of his Lille side that won the league and cup double in France for the first time since 1946 two and a half years ago, Gervinho scored 15 and assisted 10 goals that season. Of all wingers and wide forwards only Cristiano Ronaldo [49] was involved in more than he was [25] across Europe’s top five leagues over the course of the 2010-11 campaign.

That’s why Arsenal wanted him and although it was time to take the next step in his career, Gervinho, when asked if it was a wrench departing Lille, told L’Équipe: “Above all it was tough to leave Garcia [under whom he’d also worked at Le Mans]. He still needs me and I still need him.”

Theirs has always been a special bond. Garcia understands Gervinho. He knows what makes him tick. “He needs to feel the confidence of a coach and of his teammates,” Garcia explained. Gervinho complained that he didn’t receive that towards the end of his spell at Arsenal. Both wanted a reunion. “We said that one day we’d love to work together again,” Gervinho revealed. “There’s mutual respect. He knows how to use me. He knows how to deal with me when I’m playing well and when I’m not. He’s someone who I know and who knows me. My adaptation will be easier.”

And so it proved, although journalists observing his first training sessions in pre-season at the mountain resort of Riscone di Brunico in the Dolomites joked to themselves that witnessing him play was like watching someone learn how to ski rather than practice football. Gervinho was all slalom dribbles and comedy wipeouts.

Even so, captain Francesco Totti was impressed. Asked by Il Messaggero which of Roma’s new signings has made the biggest impact on him, he spared a thought for each of them, but spent longest discussing Gervinho, who really seems to have captured his imagination.  “I had seen him two or three times at Arsenal, but up close he is a beast,” Totti said. “If he scored [more] goals too he’d be like Cristiano Ronaldo and Roma would never have been able to sign him.”

Easy now, Francesco. Steady on. And yet maybe that’s precisely it: Gervinho is unsteady, swashbuckling just like the pirates in Salgari’s novels referenced by Romagnoli, a destabiliser. He sends defences in tilt. “You’ve got to understand that the scoring opportunities he creates don’t exist without him there,” Garcia claims. Many soon came to that realisation after Gervinho [and Totti] got hurt against Napoli. Deprived of him for over a month, Roma lost their unpredictability in attack. With Gervinho, they average 2.41 goals per game. Without him, only 1.

No one else can bring the same dynamic to their play and that dynamic is elasticity. Roma’s “best weapon”, according to their former caretaker, the Fiorentina coach Vincenzo Montella, is their “counter attack.” What makes it so dangerous is Gervinho.

“He doesn’t love playing on small pitches,” Garcia told Il Corriere dello Sport, “so we do training games on the big ones.” The rationale: give Gervinho space in behind to push the ball beyond a defender or two and/or run into and you’ll see the best of him. He can be devastating that way: 3 of his 6 goals have come on the counter this season. Only Atalanta’s German Denis and Torino’s Ciro Immobile match him in this respect in Serie A.

What Garcia believes makes him “a rare player in modern football” is that ability “to beat one or two men [and get separation] – of all wingers in Serie A Gervinho ranks 3rd for dribbles [2.65] per game - and also play through balls.”  To add to his 6 goals in all competitions, which make him Roma’s top scorer [they have two other players on 5 goals a piece], Gervinho also has five assists.

Among wingers and wide forwards, he is 2nd for key passes per game [1.71]. Watch, for instance, his role in setting up Maicon and Mattia Destro’s goals against Fiorentina and Adem Ljajic’s against Hellas. Somehow he gets to the byline and then tiptoes along it like a tightrope walker.

The overriding emotion watching Gervinho this season is fun not frustration. While there have been some all too familiar how-did-you-miss-that moments, most notably at home to Catania, his decision-making has often been beyond reproach. At 57.1% his shooting accuracy is the best in his position [it’s actually 11% higher than his closest rival, Napoli’s Jose Antonio Callejon].

Scorer of the winner in last week’s Coppa Italia quarter-final against Juventus and Man of the Match at Hellas on Sunday, Romagnoli isn’t the only one to proclaim: “I love Gervinho.” Everybody at Roma does.

How surprised have you been with the impact that Gervinho has had at Roma? Let us know in the comments below