Roma manager Daniele De Rossi was interviewed about his unexpected return to the capital club.
During the recent event The Coach Experience in Rimini, staged by the Italian Coaches Association (AIAC), De Rossi was asked to speak at the podium.
The Roma boss discussed a number of topics ranging from his first time coaching at the Olimpico to the way he would like for Roma to play from now on.
“If you invited me here thinking that I want to give a lesson, I will immediately get back on the train and go home,” said De Rossi.
“If anything, I’m here to learn, to compare myself with many other coaches. I often did it when I was on the other side of the bench, every experience I had with some already established coach enriched me, perhaps even with those I didn’t like, because I understood what I should never do with my players.”
“The return to Roma? It was all so unexpected. It was a very strong emotion, born in 24 hours. Yes, some indiscretions had already come out, but I read them in the newspapers and every now and then you things that are made up, embellished, but instead it was all very fast and all very secret.”
“On the first day I planned to do thirty workouts a day. I was excited, even though I’m someone who manages emotions well. But I will always remember my first match with Verona, I had many doubts, I still have many, but then we improved little by little. Now I look back and it’s all normal, but it all went by so quickly.”
“I wanted to demonstrate that I could stay there to ward off even the specter of the failure of the first experience. It might be a joke, but if we had drawn and not won the first match maybe everything would have been different.”
“A phrase that Luis Enrique always repeated is “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter”. I find it beautiful. Sometimes I have to hold back so as not to give all the information. As a coach, I always think about what I didn’t like as a player.”
“I had coaches who had technical meetings Saturday morning, Saturday evening, Sunday morning, then before getting on the bus, then before the warm-up and then also at the end: “Just two things.” In my opinion this conveyed their insecurity, not what they wanted. Then tactically the important thing is not to ask for opposite things, it would affect recognizability.”
“For me, real organization must concern the defensive phase, you must know how to defend, how to go against your opponents. For example, we started with great offensive pressure and after a couple of games I changed and told them: “Guys, we can also defend with a lower block, let’s get back the ball earlier and see what happens, without looking too much for high pressure.”
“And I saw that they felt more comfortable when they played in a tighter set-up. Then little by little we tried to get out of this situation. Change is nice, but 4-5 players must be good at reading the game, above all recognizing danger, which is something the group and I lacked, after a while they understood and when you lose the ball you are vulnerable. All things that we will learn over time.”
“Of course, if one day I ask them for the 4-4-2 and the next day 3-3-4 I’ll confuse them. I prefer to give certainties about positions, functions, ways of expressing the game.”
“I have been a good teammate, I tell myself this, and I have never abused the position of an important footballer, especially in a city like ours that lives for football. The power I had I made available to my teammates.”
“Now I always try to make the kids understand that it’s always a good time to say well done to your teammate even if he makes a mistake or at least not to let the mistake matter, because that’s what I did as a footballer and I want to pass it on.”
“There can’t be just one way to play, that would be absurd. I believe in it deeply because I think it leads to a response from the opponent. If the opponent stays low you can say goodbye to building from the back, for example. However, if they come to pick you up you have to be good at recognizing and weighing the risks, I always tell the kids this.”
“I had a coach who changed my way of seeing football a little and I had him when I was almost thirty. It was Luis Enrique and he brought us something new even though I had already been with Spalletti for example. We saw Barcelona on television and he brought it home to us. For me it was dazzling.”
“I got on well with him on a human level and also for these reasons. I was already in the national team, I was an already trained player. Yet when he left I was a better player. This makes him a great coach. For me, the greatest of all in terms of building from the back, even if perhaps many don’t like him, is Roberto De Zerbi.”
“At Roma we have data that makes us understand that after losing the ball we tend to concede a shot on goal very easily. The most negative thing about having this beautiful fluidity on the pitch is the mess it creates in transitions. When you score maybe they give you a lot of compliments, I think of Mancini’s goal against Milan. But it creates some problems for you when you lose the ball.”
“And then, if you don’t have three or four “animals” made especially for that, for stealing the ball back, it becomes dangerous. In recent months we have worked on the desire to recover the ball, perhaps even simply going under the ball instead of attacking immediately. In the future this is something we want to work on.”
“I think the most important thing in a coach is the consistency of his voice, of his demeanor. I’ll give you the example of Antonio Conte: when he got angry, it was real, it wasn’t fake. You saw inside that it was him, he spat out his pain at you and you were filled with it. He would get pissed off after a bad match or a bad first half.”
“If I copied him I would be ridiculous. I couldn’t do it, even though I appreciated it in him. I prefer to speak without shouting. I’ll tell you about the last episode, relating to the derby. I have respect for Lazio. But in preparation for the match I wanted to explain to the players how important it was for us to beat Lazio, moreover we hadn’t won in so many derbies… But I saw that the message wasn’t getting through. So I changed my strategy: I asked the Portuguese players “which team did you hate when you were a kid? Sporting Lisbon”. To the Turk: “And you?” “Fenerbahce”. I asked the German, the Frenchman and the others the same question and charged them: “Now think that you have to play against the team you hated as kids and kick their ass.”
