De Rossi: “I’m proud of how the lads are playing”

Here’s what he had to say afterwards...

I can’t understand if you’re more pleased about Mile Svilar’s five saves or if you feel Roma could’ve left the Stadio Olimpico with all three points.

“You’ve just described a typical draw. We put in a great performance. If I think that we were also here 48 hours ago after a really intense game in which we also fought until the last second and today we produced a performance of this standard in which our physical level grew as the game progressed and we played with our heads, I can’t help but feel proud. In terms of being ‘pleased’, we’re in a race in which draws aren’t exactly what we need.

“I am, however, proud of how the lads are playing, how committed they are and how they help one another. They have the same attitude in the games in which they aren’t playing quite as well and they have a desire to achieve something and reach a target that they don’t waver from, even when there are these moments in which they lack clarity and sparkle.

“I’m very pleased with the approach and thanked them for it. There are four or five players who have over 10,000 minutes of football under their belts since I took over and they’re magnificent. With an extra slice of luck, we could’ve won it tonight. They had efforts on goal too, often from long range, but they also had some chances in the box.

“We put in a strong display. They’re a really good side with exceptional players. We also have to give our opponents credit.”

What was the Paulo Dybala substitution down to?

“He felt a bit of a twinge in his thigh muscle. He says it’s nothing too serious so we’ll see. We’ll assess him in the next few days and see what needs to be done. It shouldn’t be anything serious. Let’s hope so anyway.”

It’s clear that you’re trying to get Dybala a bit closer to Romelu Lukaku into his ideal position as a second striker. This opens up the right-wing berth. Stephan El Shaarawy played there against AC Milan. You tried out Tommaso Baldanzi today. How do you make these choices and are you pleased?

“I’m pleased with Dybala and his movement in midfield. I really like teams with rapid wingers who get up and down and hog the touchline, but Dybala is a different player with different characteristics. I think as a coach, you have to get the best out of your players in terms of what they know best and where they can perform at their optimum level.

“We tried him out wide against Verona and their full-back, [Juan] Cabal, made him cover so much ground and tired him out. That explains the decision to go with Baldanzi, who can put a shift in. We often have full-backs who can push up and get into those parts of the pitch, allowing Paulo to play more centrally.”

It was a great first-half performance tonight. Did you expect both sides to get so stretched after the interval? Juve seemed fresher, but Roma did replenish energy levels as the game wore on and finished the contest strongly.

“It’s probably down to the fact that both sides wanted to win because there were chances at both ends. It doesn’t suit us to stretch games in that way against a team like Juve with such physical attributes. They’d probably win a box-to-box contest. We need to be capable of putting that sort of effort in while staying clear-headed and keeping them in their box. We managed to do that towards the end in the last ten or 15 minutes.

“We made a strong start to the second half. We have a small weakness that we want to work on. It’ll take some time, but when our opponents have a chance, it can sometimes give us a fright. It happened away to Napoli and after conceding against Bayer Leverkusen. We get a bit flustered, but that’s actually when we need to pull together and do what we know. After the opponents have a chance or even score, the pitch is still the same size, the opposition players are still the same and the things that were working well two minutes earlier could continue to work well.

“That’s all. Sometimes a bit of tiredness leads to us getting into stretched games because we make mistakes and chances get created on the counter.”

You're now three points ahead of Atalanta, but they have two games in hand, one of which will be played at the end of the season. Does the uncertainty over that game mean you have to go to Bergamo with just one possible result in mind?

“Yes! That game will be played very late and will probably be like a final for Atalanta. We cannot allow ourselves to get to that point, looking to see what happens, when we're all on holiday and they're playing their final – as is fair, because they have to and deserve to play that game.

“It's just that playing that game so late, in my view, distorts everything. It's nobody's fault – what happened unfortunately happened, but it means we have to make different calculations.”

How can you get the result you need at Leverkusen? How can you think of overturning the result against a team that is unbeaten all season?

“You believe it can be done, as if it were easy, remembering the first 28 minutes of the first leg: before we conceded, we had a good chance, had good aggression and kept the ball well, as we also did afterwards, because I think we had 68% possession. And we can't be in too much of a hurry – we're not five goals behind, but two.

“I also asked [Massimiliano] Allegri for advice! He told me you can also score in the 60th minute.  That's how it is. We must not go on the attack from the first minute, because we've seen how they play when they have space. When they get past the initial press, with those wingers they have, they cause you trouble. We have to be energetic, intense, but also intelligent, knowing that the game lasts a long time.”