Following the Giallorossi’s 4-2 defeat to league-leaders Inter at the Stadio Olimpico, Roma coach Daniele De Rossi provided his perspective on the fixture in the post-match presser.
Despite finding themselves trailing early on following a Francesco Acerbi headed-goal, the capital club were dominant in-possession with fluid and accurate passing combinations, as well as aggressive defensively with a very high-line. De Rossi’s men out-classed the Nerazzurri in the first half, as they maintained their cool and managed to gain the lead before the halftime whistle in courtesy of central defender Gianluca Mancini and winger Stephan El Shaarawy.
However, Inter regrouped themselves in the second half, as they made several adjustments that enabled them to take control of the match. coach Simone Inzaghi’s men portrayed grit and the ability to suffer as they fired three unanswered goals past Roma, seizing all three points and ending De Rossi’s three-game winning streak since taking over at the helm following the sacking of Jose Mourinho.
As it stands, Roma sit in sixth place with 37 points, only a single point ahead of Napoli who are set to face Milan Sunday evening, as well as two points adrift from fourth-placed Atalanta who possess two games in-hand.
As relayed by La Gazzetta dello Sport, De Rossi highlighted his takeaways from Roma’s display in their defeat to the Benemata, expressing pride in his men:
“There are many positive responses from this match and others that say that if we want to play with the big teams we can never lower the level, they are good and they punish you, commenced De Rossi.”
“The match was essentially played on equal terms, but despite the defeat I am proud of the boys’ attitude, they gave everything and the stadium recognized it and if the fans do it it’s certainly not to give us a sop. It was a match for real players against a very strong team, I think this is the right path” .
Furthermore, De Rossi touched upon what he thought went wrong in the match after having came back from behind prior the end of the first half:
“Individual mistakes? It’s too easy to put negative episodes on the scale and blame them on just one player, stated De Rossi”
“The games are won by everyone together. All eleven of us, including me, lowered the bar a bit. If you do it with Salernitana and Verona maybe you win, with Inter you lose. I’ve always hated this little game. We were all inferior to Inter but not too much”
“We decided to defend with a 5-man, mirroring ourselves a bit, out of respect for the opposing team. The only risk was that Angeliño didn’t have the right physicality, we wanted to take advantage of his outgoing skills and we did. Then El Shaarawy was also good. We knew we were playing a courageous match, we knew there would be painful moments and in those moments we also had to play as provincial players by starting on the counterattack.”
