Luciano Spalletti was thrilled with his players performance in their 2-1 win over Roma and hailed Victor Osimhen as ‘the complete package.’ The Nigerian striker scored an extraordinary individual goal to give the hosts the lead before Giovanni Simeone snatched a late winner to take Napoli’s lead to 13 points at the top of the table. Spalletti spoke with DAZN after the game and was thrilled with the manner of the victory and spoke about the difficulty of playing against teams like Roma:
“You win these games if you prove that you are determined to win, from the kit staff to the last man on the bench.
These are complicated matches, but those who came on proved that they were already in the game from the bench. That is a fundamental quality for our team, because these long seasons with this intensity, if you don’t have everyone within the daily work and enthusiastic about what their teammates do, eager to play alongside their teammates rather than just take their place, then you won’t get these results.
We play like that because of the characteristics we have at our disposal. When you are facing a five-man defence, if we play inside and pass it down the right, then cross to the left-back, then they don’t have time to cover the space on the other side and we can reach the edge of the box.
We didn’t have as much courage and quality as usual in moving the ball around tonight, so consequently that helped Roma with the high press. We also didn’t give Osimhen the right service, but he did well to find the spaces anyway.
There is everything in that Osimhen goal, technical quality, character to juggle the ball between two defenders, then he hit this rocket into the net, as he really has got a cannon for a foot. He has physical strength, accepts the challenge, tracks back to help, is good in the air. He is the complete package.
You can’t always play the same guys and forget what you saw during the week from the others. We have to take into account what everyone does, how eager they all are to show what they can do. Otherwise, we are not complete coaches.
At the start of the season when Osimhen was injured, Raspadori and Simeone allowed us to win the Champions League group, so it is not fair to just discard them now.”
