Jose Mourinho hits back at critics of Roma’s less than scintillating style after a win away to Torino and sniped at their third-place status. ‘Are you sure Juventus don’t have 59 points? We are in Italy…’
The Giallorossi did the bare minimum to secure all three points at the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino, as Paulo Dybala converted an early penalty for the Perr Schuurs handling offence.
It proved enough, especially the Rui Patricio fingertip save on Aleksei Miranchuk’s header, but the coach had little patience for comments about the poor quality of the performance.
“You win games when you score one more goal than your opponent,” Mourinho told DAZN.
“Whether you win 1-0 or 5-4, it makes no difference. Whoever scores one more goal wins the game. And the objective of sport is to win.
“The objective remains the same always, to win as much as possible with the quality at your disposal and try to hide the weaknesses.”
Dybala was used as a False 9, leaving both Tammy Abraham and former Torino striker Andrea Belotti on the bench, and that seemed to surprise Ivan Juric.
The result put Roma into third place, as they leapfrogged both Inter and Milan following stalemates from the San Siro sides on Friday.
However, as is the way of the Special One, Mou couldn’t resist a controversial dig at his age-old rivals.
“Are you sure that Juve don’t have 59 points? That would put us fourth. We are in Italy,” he shrugged.
The reference was to the 15-point penalty that Juventus were handed for artificially inflating transfer fees to boost capital gains.
The appeal against that sentence will be heard on April 19 and could yet revolutionise the calendar going into the final weeks of the season.
Officially, Roma are now on 53 points, Milan 52, Inter 51, Atalanta 48 and Juventus with a game in hand 45.
“We do not have a big squad, we must focus only on ourselves. A big team doesn’t lose a game so that it might have a better chance of winning the next. We have a reduced squad and are in the quarter-finals of a Europa League tournament that looks like the Champions League.”
Ola Solbakken went off in the second half with what would seem to be a dislocated shoulder after an awkward fall.
“I think today we might’ve lost Solbakken for the rest of the season.”