03/08/2024 Act. at 17:43 CET
“It was not true that Roma is a team made up of mediocre players. It was not true that they could win by thinking only of defending. It was not true that Dybala could not play three games in a row, that Spinazzola was finished, that Celik is bad, that Paredes and Cristante could not play together, that El Shaarawy is only good when he comes off the bench… It was not true that the only hope was to hold on to Mourinho. It was not true that the fans filled the stadium just for him. “It was not true that the results in Europe were exclusively thanks to him.”
This is how forceful Alessandro Austini was in his column in ‘Calciomercato’ after Roma’s spectacular victory over Brighton in the first leg of the Europa League round of 16. Nothing that the Portuguese coach boasted during his time in Rome was true. There was a team and there were footballers to play something else, and Daniele de Rossi, myth and living history of the Roman city, is proving it. Not before were they all so bad, incapable of stringing together three good matches in a row, nor are they the best now. The Italian coach has given the team a fresh air, he has touched four automatisms and the results are there.
Roma has stopped being a team that defended well and offered very little in the final meters to once again demonstrate that it is still a ‘big’ team in Italy. The resounding victory against Brighton only confirms the good feelings of a Roman team that, Since De Rossi sat on his bench, he has only lost one game in the eleven played. And it was against Inzaghi’s Inter, who are playing at a different speed right now and are going to win Serie A without blinking.
Eight wins, two draws and a single defeat is the balance of the Italian coach in Rome so far, top-level numbers for a team that wants to continue growing. Lukaku, Cristante, Svilar… All the footballers who spoke after the duel against Brighton expressed their intention to maintain the upward trend. They are committed and eager, with a project in which they believe.
Meanwhile, Mourinho continues to take advantage of the opportunities in which he can speak to harass the board and the players of Roma, who look the other way, envisioning a better future than what they had with the Portuguese. That’s how football goes. The Portuguese, for now, is still without a team. Waiting. We’ll see if any big players consider signing him.
2024-03-08 16:43:04
#remembers #Mourinho #Rome
