Roma beat Newport County 4:1 in a club friendly at Rodney Parade on Tuesday. The Italian side opened the scoring through M. Hermoso before Newport pulled one back just after the break. Two late goals from M. Soule and K. Cameron sealed the result for the visitors.
Hermoso gave Roma the lead in the thirty-eighth minute. Newport responded with a yellow card for L. Jenkins forty minutes in, a caution that came without clear context in the available data. The hosts made a change at half-time, bringing on J. Wright as the sides regrouped.
Roma took control after the interval. S. Castro converted a penalty in the fifty-fourth minute, restoring the two-goal advantage. Newport refused to fold completely, with K. Koulierakis finding the net in the fifty-ninth minute to give them hope. By then the match was already beyond their reach.
The visitors added two more goals in quick succession. M. Soule scored in the eighty-first minute, and K. Cameron finished things in the eighty-fifth. Both goals came after a flurry of substitutions from Roma, who brought on Y. Bamba, E. Ndicka, M. Svilar, N. El Aynaoui, and G. Mancini across the final quarter.
The statistics tell an uneven story. Newport registered six shots on target compared to Roma's four, yet the visitors scored four goals. Expected goals favoured Roma at 1.58 to 1.05, and possession sat at 64 per cent for the Italians. Newport's shot accuracy of 0.67 did not translate into results against a Roma side that saved five times from their limited attempts.
Both sides showed signs of experimentation with multiple changes. Newport replaced L. Jenkins in the seventy-eighth minute and brought on C. Norman in the eighty-sixth. Roma kept making alterations right through to the final whistle, with J. Thomas coming on in the ninetieth minute. The result leaves Roma with a comfortable scoreline, though the friendly format means little beyond preparation for the season ahead.
