At the last gasp, Roma grabbed three very precious points in Udine for the Champions League.
After the match, Mister #De Rossi commented on the result like this.
It was #an attacking Roma: no one expected a team like that. # How did the match study set up in this way come about?
“It was a mixture of tactics and logic. # Of tactics, because on Spina’s side we had found enough space in the match that had been suspended: Evan was playing there, but being a central defender he had less momentum, and we wanted to bring in a push player.
And then, precisely, it was less tactical and more logical: I tried to keep as many players as possible on the pitch who could score goals even without a collective play but with a shot from outside, a header from a corner, a play individual. # I removed players who are very regular players for me, like Paredes, and I put in people like Bryan and Lollo (Pellegrini, ed.), who could score from a corner or a free kick.
And as for Angelino, I put him so he could cross for the two attackers.”
We discovered a slightly different celebration from #De Rossi.
“I’m ashamed, everyone is making fun of me. # But I’m really happy. # Beyond the fact that it was important for the league table, it was important for morale, because after the defeat against Bologna we were a bit down in spirits.
And this instead #gives #us a nice #injection of confidence, of happiness. # And I’m happy for the players, because they performed fantastically. # There are people who came here knowing they wouldn’t play even a minute: they supported the trip, they celebrated at the end of the game, they were all happy.
They went onto the pitch to celebrate knowing that they wouldn’t even be replaced, because I had already notified the five I was thinking of bringing on during these 20 minutes, because so they continued the warm-up and there was #an incredible participation. # Even when I was playing, these kinds of things moved me. # And as a coach, they affect me even more. # It’s really beautiful.
And then I’m a bit happy also because this match was at the center of controversy regarding the resumption date.
I’m sorry for a stadium that has treated #us so well, like the one in Udine, but I think that we are the first team in Italian football that goes to play a European semi-final against #an undefeated team, champions of Germany, and their own federation #gives them one less day to prepare it. # We will go to Naples with only two days of preparation, while they had a week of training camp. # But the response received from my players tonight makes me feel calm. # We have a team of wonderful men.”
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Does this #victory, this adrenaline change anything in the preparation for the away match against Napoli?
“No. # The mood changes, the ranking changes, which is no small thing. # However, little changes for us: we have already started studying Napoli, because tactically these 20 minutes against Udinese didn’t require much preparation, so we had time to look at the immediate future.
We know that it is a very strong team, which last year, for better or worse, with the same players, killed the championship. # It is one of the strongest, together with Inter and perhaps Milan. # I consider them very strong as individuals. # We know it will be very difficult.
We will prepare it as we have prepared the others, hoping to get more moves right than in the match against Bologna. # It will certainly be a highly technical match.”
You have reached Mourinho: 29 points in 13 games. # But it took Mourinho 20 games to score the same points as you. # This data is surprising. # Do you want to comment on it? # What was the secret?
“I watch everything, except the competition of who scores the most points between me and the coach. # It is clear that we are doing very well. # It is obvious but not to everyone, every now and then someone forgets it. # We are scoring a lot of points, we are doing so well and we have reopened a discussion that, when we arrived, seemed closed: not so much because of the points from fourth place – five or six – but because of how many teams we had ahead of #us and how many teams we would have had to recover so many points from .
The guys are doing #an incredible job. # I don’t think that if the coach had remained, they wouldn’t have recovered all these points. # They would have made it anyway, because it all starts from them, because they are players with enormous hearts, and champions with enormous hearts, even in moments when things aren’t going well, and you score few points, with the pride of champions they they get out of those situations.
I believe, therefore, that they would have gotten their heads out of that bad situation even without me.”
