Roma manager Daniele De Rossi says he wants to see a motivated team with great intensity, ahead of their match with Torino. The Giallorossi are fresh from qualification to the last 16 of the Europa League, but speaking ahead of the game, De Rossi dismissed any notion of hangover from last Thursday’s match with Feyenoord, despite the game going to penalties:
“The team is in good spirits,” said De Rossi while reflecting on the Giallorossi’s recent success in the Europa League. “There is enthusiasm as always when you win a match like this. But there will be some physical consequences, we ran for many minutes on Thursday. We will pay for something in terms of fatigue, and we will have to make choices”
“I don’t know much because we haven’t trained yet, yesterday we did little and today we’ll see how the players are doing,” he said when asked about rotations.
“Torino? Juric is a great coach, he is one of the first I learned from. Toro are the worst team to face after playing 120 minutes, but we will be ready. He has quality players and is great coach. It will be a good challenge.”
“Post-Europa League hangover? I don’t know what happened before my arrival. This is a tough game, but don’t talk to me about the hangover. If we go in with the wrong attitude, it will mean I did everything wrong. After Frosinone I said that I was wrong to send that team onto the pitch, and twice in a row I didn’t…”
“I want to see a motivated team, with great intensity, for us every match is the match of a lifetime. We have to run, we can’t stop. If we had won a cup, there would be satisfaction. But we advanced to the round of 16, let’s remember that. If we enter the pitch drunk with happiness it means that the coach has done a terrible job.”
“Rotations? I don’t like changing 10 players, but on Thursday there was an extra half hour of play and penalties. We will evaluate it today, I want to see how the boys are doing and how they respond to understand beyond the enthusiasm if they are able to face an expensive match like tomorrow’s.”
“Smalling? Smalling is fine, we know he can’t play ninety minutes, maybe he will prove us wrong. We don’t know whether to start him from the beginning or throw him in later. I can see him doing well, he looks much calmer, relaxed, we will decide in the next few hours.”
“Abraham and Lukaku? When I saw Abraham and Lukaku close together I said “I want to let them play together”. It’s an idea that needs to be studied and trained. We don’t know how Abraham will be, he won’t be 100%, it’s an idea that I might like in the future, but there’s no certainty.”
“Now that we have Azmoun anyway, the idea is to play with one striker, otherwise I would have kept Belotti. How is Lukaku? He’s great, very happy. we didn’t even analyze the missed penalty. Instead, we analyzed that in the 120th minute he made a sprint and almost scored a goal by himself. He is calm. Then the attackers get discouraged if they don’t score, but in the first leg in Rotterdam he scored and I couldn’t be happier with him.”
