A few minutes after the final whistle, fresh from exiting the Europa Conference League and slipping to a semi-final defeat that ends their hopes of playing on the continent next season, Leicester’s players trudged across to the corner of this throbbing arena where their 3,500 travelling supporters were housed. Kasper Schmeichel chucked his goalkeeping gloves into the crowd, Jamie Vardy his shin pads and, given they are lagging behind in the Premier League, 11th and out of the picture with five games to play, it was hard to escape the feeling that Leicester’s season in effect ended here, to a slender defeat courtesy of an early Tammy Abraham header.
The galling thing for Brendan Rodgers was that Abraham’s 27th goal of the season stemmed from a set piece, the England striker towering above Ricardo Pereira at a corner to score the decisive goal in this tie. In the buildup Rodgers pinpointed set plays as one of Roma’s primary threats and he conceded Pereira against Abraham was an unfortunate mismatch. The Leicester defender Jonny Evans confirmed Pereira was assigned to mark Abraham. “Our achilles heel has been set pieces and it has undone us again in what was a very tight game, so that is clearly disappointing,” Rodgers said. “We’ve gone man to man, we’ve gone to zonal, but it clearly doesn’t work consistently enough. We’re giving away too many cheap goals and too many times it has cost us. Clearly we lack physicality in those moments.”
