Paulo Fonseca appeared at a pre-match press conference today as his side prepares to host Swiss outfit BSC Young Boys tomorrow in the Italian capital in the Europa League.
The Portuguese tactician addressed the team’s mood after being dismantled by Napoli and also denied a story that emerged today that President and Vice President Dan and Ryan Friedkin entered the dressing room to scold the players following the result.
“I want to say something: I’ve always had respect for the work of journalists since I’ve been here, but this story on the President and Vice President is a huge lie,” said Fonseca. “I won’t accept it, you lack respect for the team by doing this.”
“Beyond this, we did our usual analysis of the match against Napoli and the players understood and realise where we need to improve. We have to learn from our mistakes without making a big drama out of everything. We can’t let the result against Napoli change everything about what we’ve done so far: the atmosphere remains positive.”
“We can’t think about what happened against Napoli, that’s in the past and tomorrow is a new game for us — the most important thing is getting a result.”
Fonseca then addressed who could be out on the pitch tomorrow as Roma are slowly starting to welcome back several key players who have been out either due to injuries or COVID.
“We’ll see tomorrow if Pellegrini and Dzeko play, they’ve been out for awhile so we’ve got to be attentive to their physical condition.”