Roma Coach Luciano Spalletti expects a “difficult game” against Lyon as “the level of the French League has increased”.
The Lupi are in France for the first leg of their Europa League Last 16 tie, which takes place tomorrow night. “They played two very good games against Juventus," Spalletti pointed out in his pre-match Press conference.
“It will be a difficult game, the level of the French League has increased. You can’t compare it to the past when there was only Lyon.
Roma Coach Luciano Spalletti expects a “difficult game” against Lyon as “the level of the French League has increased”.
The Lupi are in France for the first leg of their Europa League Last 16 tie, which takes place tomorrow night. “They played two very good games against Juventus," Spalletti pointed out in his pre-match Press conference.
“It will be a difficult game, the level of the French League has increased. You can’t compare it to the past when there was only Lyon.
“Now there’s also Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, Nice… the competitiveness has increased. Before there was a chance to surprise them, now they’re accustomed to playing big matches.
“It’s clear that they [Lyon] have unquestionable quality, it will be crucial not to be too open because of the pace they have.
“If we leave big gaps, [Alexandre] Lacazette knows how to exploit them with the qualities that he has. We’ll have to run.
“It’s clear that these are the kind of games you play knowing that there’s a return leg. You play 180 minutes.
“Then of course doing well away from home brings an important advantage, so you have to try and play the game, all the while paying attention to the home leg.
“We’ll play the game to try and win it. We want to maintain balance, but we’ll try to win.”
The Giallorossi have lost their last two games, to Lazio and Napoli, is mental fatigue affecting Spalletti’s side?
“When it comes to fatigue, it’s not just muscles that are important, it comes down to what your head says.
“If you tell the squad that they’re tired and we have to repeat training, it’s the same as saying you’ll give them a two-month bonus for losing matches.
“We’ve played against two strong teams, maybe getting some things wrong, but in both cases we were in the game.
“In some cases things have gone in our favour, in others things have gone against us. There are a lot of games, I trust the capacity of my players.
“What we’ve earned we’ve earned with sweat and the level of football that we’ve played. And since we’ve earned it with sweat, we want to hold onto it.
“There are complications to overcome, but we’re a strong team which finds solutions even in difficult times.
“Those were two defeats which hurt, but for now we have two defeats. Now we go forward with the knowledge that everything is in our hands, despite having lost that small advantage which gave us confidence.
“Now we need to be mentally strong to deal with these small tensions.”