Malen bags a Serie A hat-trick for Roma

Was in the pub when the score came through and the place absolutely erupted because one of the lads is a Roma fan and he just started shouting about Malen like he had won the lottery and then the rest of us were trying to work out if it was actually the same Malen people have been talking about for ages and by the end of the night everyone was acting like they had been watching him since he was a kid it was one of those proper football pub moments where nobody agrees on anything but suddenly everyone is a tactical expert and a scout and a lifelong believer all at once
 
Roma have clearly found something that suits him and that deserves credit, because players do not just stumble into performances like this without the right environment and confidence around them. But football people are already going way too far, talking about golden boots and all sorts after one night, and it always turns into this weird cycle where everyone either crowns a player or buries him, no middle ground at all, and the same people will be back in three weeks calling him a flop if he does not score, the whole sport is cursed by overreaction and i am already sick of it
 
the big thing for me is how much of this comes down to timing and service because a striker can look anonymous in one setup and then look unstoppable in another and if gasperini keeps putting him in those positions then he will keep scoring simple as that
 
The headline stat is obviously the hat-trick, but the more meaningful point is how quickly he has adapted to Roma. If a player is getting into the right spaces and the team is creating for him, the goals usually follow.
 
People keep saying he is some kind of finished product now but it is literally one night and a good fit can change everything, you lot do this every time a player scores a few and then pretend the context never mattered
 
A measured read is that Malen seems to have found a system that maximises his strengths rather than asking him to be something he is not, and that can make a huge difference at this level. The problem is people will now try to turn every conversation into a ranking exercise, as if one hat-trick settles his whole career, and that sort of nonsense is exactly why football discourse is unbearable, because nobody wants to just say a player had a great night and move on, they need the hyperbole, the clips, the declarations, the same recycled arguments about leagues and reputations and whether someone is overhyped or underrated, and then somehow we end up talking about Brighton or Villa or national team kits instead of the actual football
 
honestly if a forward lands in a gasperini side and starts scoring like this then you have to think the move was well timed because the whole shape seems to suit him and roma fans are gonna have a lot of fun if he keeps this up
 
people need to talk about how much of this is about the player finally getting the service and the role he should have had sooner because every time I watched him before it felt like he was being asked to do bits of everything and not enough of what he is actually good at and now suddenly he looks alive and confident and direct and all the same people who said he was not up to it will be pretending they were always on his side and that is what annoys me most because football fans love rewriting history the second a player has a big night and then they pile on when the form dips and act like they never backed him and honestly this is why players get judged so stupidly because no one has patience anymore and then they wonder why lads struggle under pressure and i am not even some massive malen fan but this constant cycle of hype and hate is just pathetic
 
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