De Rossi: “Heroic performance. We’ll move forward with this spirit”

Here’s what the boss had to say...

It’s a real mixture of feelings: disappointment, but also pride, because you gave one of the best teams in Europe a real scare until the 81^st minute.

“We put in a heroic performance against a top team. Just like in Rome, we played well for the first 20 minutes. We didn’t take many shots on goal - we have a habit of shying away from shooting, when sometimes having a punt can make the difference.

“However, the lads put in a really stellar performance. Two days ago we were facing Juve, giving our all until the dying moments, and this evening we put in another phenomenal physical and mental effort.

“Obviously Leverkusen played well - they had many shots on goal, I’m not denying that. But when you make a comeback and come close to pulling off a miracle, knowing that nobody has beaten them this season, and then concede through a really unlucky goal, the pain is great. That being said, we need to move forward with this spirit - we’ve got other important games on the horizon. We need to dust ourselves down and dig deep for the three remaining games.”

How are things looking ahead of the away day in Bergamo, regarding your players’ fitness levels? In terms of pride, there can be no doubts.

“Pride only takes you so far. We’ve lost another player to injury [Leandro Spinazzola, ed.] and many of our players were tiring long before the final whistle. But we’ve got to be ready. There’s no doubt that Roma and Atalanta will be in different moods for this fixture, but at the end of the day the football on the pitch is what does the talking.

“They were confident ahead of today and had said as much before their match, but it panned out differently. We’ve got to be ready for another very challenging match. There’s nothing for us to discover about Atalanta and them reaching the final. We’ll need to be well-prepared.

“We know that it’s a tough time. Since we came here we knew that we’d find it tough until the end and I’ve got no complaints from the lads.”

What have Roma learnt from their European adventure? How’s Paulo Dybala doing?

“You learn something in every game. It’s a new experience – at this point last season I’d just made my dip into coaching in Serie B. We’ve gone on a journey, reaching a European semi-final, which, if I’m not mistaken, only four or five Roma coaches have achieved in the past. I’m talking about [Jose] Mourinho, [Eusebio] Di Francesco, [Paulo] Fonseca, [Nils] Liedholm and obviously Ottavio Bianchi.

“I feel proud of this because we’ve dealt with four semi-finals, in the sense that we’ve played against four teams that could’ve easily reached this stage of the competition. I’d like to give the lads credit for this.

“I’ve learnt lessons from this, the fact that my job doesn’t end when the final whistle goes, or when I reach a semi-final and bask in the achievement. My job is now to analyse why we didn’t get as far as the final. I think that our opponents were a better team than us. I’ve always said that we give our all and that we do everything within our power both on and off the pitch to make their lives hard. After that, if the opposition are still superior to us then we accept it gracefully. Bayer deserve a tip of the cap in this regard because in my opinion, they were the better side today. 

“As for Dybala, he really made himself available. He’s still in the dressing room receiving ice treatment, even though he didn’t play. Yesterday, after 10 minutes of training, he felt the niggle once again. We avoided him suffering a serious injury. We took him to Leverkusen thinking that, if we were winning 1-0 with ten minutes left on the clock, we’d put him on to try and get him to weave some magic. However, the game obviously played out differently. I’d have maybe waited until extra time to put him on, to avoid him playing too many minutes.”