Roma Coach Luciano Spalletti is looking forward to facing Porto tomorrow – “we’ve wanted this for eight months”.
The Giallorossi face the second leg of their Champions League play-off at Stadio Olympic tomorrow, having drawn 1-1 in Portugal.
After confirming that Alessandro Florenzi and Vasilis Torosidis won’t be available, the tactician turned his attention to the challenge at hand.
“It’s easy to talk about this game,” Spalletti noted in his pre-match Press conference.
Roma Coach Luciano Spalletti is looking forward to facing Porto tomorrow – “we’ve wanted this for eight months”.
The Giallorossi face the second leg of their Champions League play-off at Stadio Olympic tomorrow, having drawn 1-1 in Portugal.
After confirming that Alessandro Florenzi and Vasilis Torosidis won’t be available, the tactician turned his attention to the challenge at hand.
“It’s easy to talk about this game,” Spalletti noted in his pre-match Press conference.
“It’s not that this game is waiting for us tomorrow, we want to get to it. We’ve wanted this for eight months, we’ve worked to be there tomorrow and it’s what we wanted, what we desired.
“Last year this was everything for us, it gives us the keys to enter the most important stage in Europe.
“We ready to play it, because for eight months we’ve wanted to be where we’ll be tomorrow night.”
Spalletti was then asked if he’d tell his players to ignore the result from the first leg and simply try to win on the night.
“Yes, that’s how we’ll prepare and work. It’s clear that the players have to be experts, preparing the wrong way or doing too many calculations is likely to lower the level of quality.
“We have to go out there and do our part. In this case that means showing we can win a difficult game like this.
“Tomorrow I have to play my best team. I’ll try to choose those who have the best qualities for what we want to do.
“We won’t leave things down to fate, we determine what our destiny will be. We’ll play the game head-on, trying to win it, not waiting to play.”
Thomas Vermaelen’s red card made life more difficult in the away leg, but the Coach was somewhat disappointed with his side’s reaction.
“In terms of game management and experience, we didn’t manage our lead in the best way,” Spalletti admitted.
“In the second half we didn’t try to play as much. We were outnumbered, but at the end of the game we spent five minutes at the opponent’s corner flag.
“I expect things to be done differently tomorrow even in difficulties, we want to perform every time we’re lucky enough to wear these colours.”