Gasperini: ‘Roma didn’t play the way we wanted to, mistake on Napoli goal’

Gian Piero Gasperini had his say on what went wrong in the Napoli goal to defeat Roma, admitting they ‘didn’t play the way we wanted to’ in this Scudetto battle.

The Giallorossi coach was forced to watch from the stands of the Stadio Olimpico, as he sat out a touchline ban prompted by the red card for dissent in last week’s win over Cremonese.

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He seemed to be furious from there too when Manu Koné was challenged by Amir Rrahmani on the edge of the area, as the referee waved play on for Napoli to go on the rapid counter-attack and score through David Neres.

The footage was shown to the coach and analysed by refereeing pundit Luca Marelli, who noted Rrahmani clearly made contact with the ball.

“These incidents can be seen in many different ways, I wouldn’t say it was so clear, as the player raises his leg after touching the ball and catches Kone’s leg. We see many sliding tackles like that which are given as fouls,” Gasperini told DAZN Italia.

“In any case, we were still badly unbalanced in that situation with Hermoso and Mancini out of position, so were the wing-backs, so there were our own mistakes in this situation that we should not have allowed.

“It was our error, the only time we really allowed that counter-attack, even in the second half when we were chasing the game.”

The counter-attack does seem to be a weakness for Roma this season, as it also was under Ivan Juric and Daniele De Rossi before him. Claudio Ranieri had solved it by defending deeper, but that is not Gasperini’s philosophy.

“We’ve had many games where we conceded very few goals. Besides, by defending deeper, you leave yourself open to conceding different types of goals. We went into this match as Serie A leaders because of our style of football, but naturally there ought to be balance and coverage, which we didn’t do on that occasion.”

Paulo Dybala made his comeback on Thursday in the Europa League win over Midtjylland and had been expected to start this evening, but only came on midway through the second half.

Although they dominated possession, the only genuine scoring opportunity was in the final minute, with a Vanja Milinkovic-Savic save on Tommaso Baldanzi.

“Napoli had very few chances too, what disappoints us is that we didn’t have the right energy, as we paid a heavy price for Thursday’s Europa League game and didn’t have the right pace, nor move the ball quickly enough. When you are up against the organisation of Napoli, that becomes damaging.

“Unfortunately, we were a little patched up today and didn’t get to play the way we wanted to in this big match,” explained Gasperini.

Roma have struggled in the big games so far this season, losing the head-to-head battles with Inter, AC Milan and now Napoli, all of them by 1-0 scorelines.

Curiously, all four of their losses in Serie A this season were 1-0, and three of them were at the Stadio Olimpico.

“They were all different games. The tempo was slower from both teams, it wasn’t as entertaining as we’d become accustomed to,” replied Gasperini.

“It’s a pity, we didn’t have the necessary energy. The season is very long, it is very tight at the top and almost like an elimination competition with the importance of every result and so many teams involved.

“Now we have a week to prepare and rest, then we’ll go back into having a game every three days. We must learn from matches like this and take them forward.”