These were the words of Mister De Rossi after Empoli-Roma, the Giallorossi’s last official match of the season.
You played a very serious match, you even had the chance to win it. Empoli’s need to win made the difference.
“Many things make the difference in football, right? But we shouldn’t say we were good because we played a serious game. We don’t have to get a medal. We did what we had to do, but there are too many things to improve: from the point of view of defensive attention, from the point of view of the fact that you keep the ball a lot and shoot very little, and above all because you cannot have many counterattacks and never arrive when shooting: it’s not like you say ‘I’ll shoot and save it’, because you don’t even shoot. At this level, then you pay for it.
Obviously, they threw the ball forward, tried to score, they brought in many attackers, as was right. But this match should have ended 2-1 easily for us, on one of the many counterattacks we had. It’s not normal to never shoot on goal when you have these spaces on the restart.”
We saw a Roma lined up with three again. The feeling is that you changed every time you couldn’t field your ideal Roma. Will this be the idea for next year, i.e. starting from a Rome with a stable gaming system that reflects your ideas, or do you prefer to evaluate from time to time?
“We will evaluate many things. We start rescheduling precisely by evaluating this match. This match has to tell us many things. We played with four, as we often have done, and then every now and then, when we were lower, we defended with three, as has already happened in many circumstances.
Not much has changed. The fact of the final goal is a matter that even with the four-man defense you cannot concede: we went limp in the aerial duel. You can’t concede a goal like that in Serie A. It must make us reflect, beyond the reflections we will make for the construction of the new team: it’s something that hurts me, because I didn’t want to end the season like this, it doesn’t matter finishing in front to Lazio, it’s not a matter of Empoli. We won the match and you can’t lose it like that.”
You have already discussed with the new Head of the Technical Area (Ghisolfi, ed.), also from the point of view of the attacker’s characteristics: which profile would you like?
“Yes, we talked, we spent an afternoon together. We discussed both the construction of the squad and some names. In the first chat there was great harmony, we have a lot of time to talk about it, to see the opportunities, to also understand the availability, which are topics that we have not yet touched on.
This evening it is still premature, and perhaps disrespectful, to talk about this, because I can’t say I didn’t like the match I saw tonight, but you can’t lose it if you want to become great.”
Do you want to leave a message for Di Francesco?
“I don’t think he wants to hear it. I would have tried to play it like this even if we had had to play against him or against Fabio (Cannavaro, ed.). This is our job. However, he didn’t deserve to be relegated for what they did as a team, for what they did as a game, even against us.
I don’t favor one team or the other, because we don’t have to look anyone in the face, but the fact that this last-minute goal punishes a coach, a boy I particularly respect, hurts me even more.”
