Daniele De Rossi has little interest in festivities on the calendar, as he insists that he and his squad of Roma players are raring to go again after the return of Serie A action this weekend.
Roma will travel to Lecce for their first game back from the break on Easter Monday, to face a side still adjusting to their new coach Luca Gotti.
De Rossi suggested that due to Lecce’s recent change in coaches, the team have had little to go off in their preparations, so they have instead prepared for a number of different scenarios.
He does, however, believe that points are worth double, possibly even triple for teams towards the bottom of the table at this stage of the season, which means that Lecce will perhaps be a tougher task than at other stages of the campaign.
De Rossi previews Lecce-Roma
De Rossi began his preview of Roma’s trip to Lecce: “Sometimes we spend Christmas or boxing day together, this time it’s Easter, but that doesn’t matter. We really want to get back to playing, and if it means missing a holiday at home, then so be it.
“Now, the points are really worth double, if not triple, especially for the teams near the bottom, so it will be a very tough match.”
Discussing what he expected to see from Lecce on Monday, De Rossi added: “They’re a team that struggled a bit in the last few games, then got a great result in Salerno. They will definitely be fierce.
“We’ve had to prepare for this match without much to go on as Gotti has only had one game with Lecce.
“We’ve prepared two versions of the game plan, one for a set-up similar to the way he’s played in the past, and another for a team similar to the one we saw in Salerno. We have two options, and we’ll see which one we use, because we don’t have much material to analyse.”
De Rossi also provided an update on a number of his recent internationals, all of whom resumed training at the back-end of this week.
“Obviously some of them have done a lot of travelling, they’ve come back and rested and not done too much training, but that’s international football. I played a lot for Italy and worked as a collaborator, so I respect the way it goes.
“Everyone came back yesterday and we had a great training session. I was really pleased to see the team like that. They’re fully focused on the task ahead.”
De Rossi also gave an update on some of his injured players, specifically long-term absentee Tammy Abraham and the influential Paulo Dybala, who is a doubt heading into the Lecce match.
“We still have a couple of doubts, Tammy (Abraham) won’t be available for this game because he’s working to a very specific timescale and needs to get a third and fourth week of full training under his belt.
“We’ll look at Paulo (Dybala) tomorrow. He was training quite intensely by himself, yesterday it was without the ball. He joined the team today, but we took it quite easy. Tomorrow, we’ll see how he is and whether he can come with us, if he can start of sit on the bench.”
🎙️ “Abbiamo tanta voglia di ricominciare a giocare”
Le parole di Daniele De Rossi in vista di Lecce-Roma #ASRoma pic.twitter.com/9zmCOB8ijs
— AS Roma (@OfficialASRoma) March 30, 2024
Easter does, in FACT, matter!
Buona Pasqua, Happy Easter. He is Risen!