Roma midfielder Leandro Paredes was the hero for the Giallorossi following his brace all the way up until Bayer Leverkusen’s two goals late in the game which eliminated De Rossi’s side from this year’s Europa League.
In his post-match interview with Sky Sport, Paredes discussed what went wrong in the final ten minutes of the game that saw Roma collapse.
“This loss hurts. It hurts because we seemed to be in control of the game and unfortunately after Mancini’s own goal we were forced to leave open spaces, you can’t do that against strong players.”
“We did everything we could to score two goals, until the 82nd minute we had a great match. The own goal forced us to leave space for Bayer to attack.”
“We made a great effort. We wanted to give the final to the fans but we went home empty-handed,” he added.
“Fatigue is there, but for these 3 remaining games it’s more of a mental thing. We will work as hard as we can to get to Sunday as best we can because we have the most important match of the year.”
