Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi's status as automatic starters for Roma has called into question after the Giallorossi recovered without them to draw with Juventus on Monday.
Roma barely looked like scoring for the first 70 minutes of Serie A's top-of-the-table clash at the Stadio Olimpico, and it was only after captain Totti and then his fellow club stalwart De Rossi left the field that Rudi Garcia's side burst into life.
"Roma only got back into the game when their legends Totti and De Rossi were taken off," former AC Milan and Italy coach Arrigo Sacchi told Mediaset television. "The game had been boring up to then with one side [Juve] happy enough just to control the game and the other [Roma] unable to do more."
Instead, substitutes Radja Nainggolan and Juan Manuel Iturbe provided the spark which saw Roma salvage a point after falling behind to Carlos Tevez's free-kick to leave only nine rather than 12 points between the two clubs at the top of the Serie A standings.
"You cannot play the biggest game of your lives this way," the vice-director of Rome-based Corriere dello Sport wrote in his column on Tuesday. "Garcia's choices were incomprehensible. How can he leave out Nainggolan in a game like this which Roma were obliged to turn into a battle -- there's no logical explanation.
"Was it for this De Rossi? It's not only now that we saw the team wake up with the Belgian on the field, and he had been rested in Rotterdam too. More than anything, though, it was Roma's attitude which was shocking. It was a game they had to win at all costs, even at the risk of losing it, yet for 70 minutes all we saw was an unwatchable passing of the ball without a shot on goal.
"The satisfaction with which Garcia welcomed this draw in the end is like a surrender. It seems this draw is fine to him; as if Roma were nine points ahead of the Bianconeri and not the other way round. Can Garcia be happy with that?"
Roma are certainly happy with him with president James Pallotta saying reports to the contrary are purely fabricated.
"Who's saying that?" he asked reporters. "Rudi's not going anywhere. It's my call, right? He's had to deal with so many injuries and so many lineup changes.
"When we played with a man down for the last 30 minutes and completely pressured them and outplayed them and muscled them out, I felt we had won the game actually.
"It just shows these guys have a lot of pride. Most teams in the world would have said I'm down by a goal and there are 20 minutes left against Juve, and most teams would say I go home, but this was the opposite."