Roma suffered a devastating defeat in their last UK preseason friendly at the Amex Stadium against Brighton.
The English side outclassed the Giallorossi with a resounding 3-0 victory.
Gian Piero Gasperini’s team came close to scoring on several occasions, but after conceding a third goal, the Roman side bowed out. After the match, the Grugliasco-born coach had this to say.
The coach commented on the match: “Today was undoubtedly a terrible match. We put in a poor performance. This week we were able to train in a cool environment with excellent infrastructure. This wasn’t a good match; we’re having some difficulties, and we think we can fix them.”
Gasp then tried to clarify the reasons why his team struggled to get back into the game: “It’s not a question of fitness, we played disjointed as a team, certainly without the right concentration and with some players coming back from the World Cup. Ndicka, Malen and El Aynaoui are drained, patience is needed. When you come back from certain competitions it may take a little longer to recover.”
“The feeling I have is that this team needs more time to reconnect. The ones we worked with straight away we did a good job, for example Dybala is doing very well.”
Pellegrini’s contract renewal was announced today, and Gasperini took stock of the No. 7’s condition: “Pellegrini will need at least a month to recover. We’ll talk about it again in September.”
The coach discussed the transfer market: “At this point in the transfer market, we were undoubtedly all hoping to be further along. There are different issues: some have too many players and others, like us, have too few. As always, the transfer market is decided in the last 15 days of August. These are incorrect dates, but that’s how it is. I don’t feel like ruling out sales; we have a CEO; you should ask him these questions, asking him what Roma can and cannot do. Roma will consult him on the numbers and transfer market possibilities.”
Finally, the Giallorossi coach focused on the new arrivals and D’Amico’s work: “We replaced Celik with Molina, who we’ll see on Tuesday, and Dovbyk with Castro, who will give us a hand, and for me it was a good move. Then Koulierakis arrived, who is an interesting player to complete the defense. If you do the math, it seems like we still need something. We’ll have to see who to go and how to close things down. D’Amico is negotiating with young, important players, that’s the indication.”
