Daniele De Rossi admits Roma were feeling ‘pressure’ and a little ‘fear’ going into the clash with Juventus, but must learn to ‘hold steady and keep the faith.’
The Giallorossi were in crisis coming to the Allianz Juventus Stadium with a draw away to Cagliari and home defeat to Empoli, so could be perhaps forgiven for taking a more cautious approach to the league leaders.
De Rossi opted to mirror the Bianconeri’s 4-2-3-1 system, leaving Paulo Dybala and Leandro Paredes initially on the bench, but giving 19-year-old Niccolò Pisilli his first senior start.
It allowed them to emerge from Turin with a creditable 0-0 draw, having run very few real risks and only one Mile Svilar save.
“It was important for us to be solid and compact, after trying to do that against Cagliari and losing it against Empoli. It is a period full of pressure for us at Roma and it was important to emerge from here with a point,” De Rossi told Sky Sport Italia.
“We know who we are, we know who we will be this season and I think this was a good starting point. It wasn’t the best game, we could’ve done better with the ball at our feet, but Juve brought on incredible players in the second half and we held out.”
Artem Dovbyk was again largely anonymous in attack, a far cry from the top scorer seen in LaLiga last season, so is there a problem serving or communicating with the centre-forward?
“Everyone is scared of Dovbyk, he drew Bremer and Gatti towards him and created spaces, we could’ve been more attacking with the wingers, but that would’ve left the kind of spaces we paid for in the previous two games.
“It is not an issue of communication or performances, Dovbyk fought hard against two very physical defenders and the goals will come soon.”
De Rossi wants more confident Roma
Roma started to really attack Juve in the final minutes, so were they a little too respectful to begin with in Turin?
“Our first 10 minutes against Empoli were excellent, but then we conceded a goal and got scared. It turned into a terrible performance,” admits De Rossi.
“Perhaps the strength of our opponents made us wary tonight, so we need to focus on our own concepts and ideas, we cannot allow fear to come in. At the 94th minute, we had Shomurodov pressing their goalkeeper, so we just have to learn how to hold steady when in a storm and keep the faith.”
Fabio Capello was in the Sky Sport Italia studio and asked De Rossi about the comment he made that Roma will ‘be challenging for the Scudetto in a little while.’ Does he believe that?
“It depends what you mean by in a little while… I didn’t mean this season, it was more aimed towards the future, bringing in good players this summer. We cannot bring in 15 players per summer, we need to keep building on that promise and realise there are currently teams clearly stronger than we are. But yes, I am convinced we’ll get there eventually.”