Roma manager Jose Mourinho spoke to reporters after the team touched down in Seville earlier today ahead of tomorrow night’s return leg with Real Betis. The Portuguese manager looks to bounce back following the 1-2 loss at the Olimpico last week.
“Our injuries? The World Cup has been a real factor a while now. It’s here and it’s now. We have to deal with this situation. I’ve learned to cry less and face the reality of the situation at hand.”
“There are various teams. The poor teams play once a week, the rich ones play more than once a week and are equipped to do so and then the ones in-between are forced to play the same number of games as the rich ones but struggle to do so.”
“Belotti and El Shaarawy? Neither one will start tomorrow,” he added.
When addressing the team’s goal-scoring difficulties, Mourinho said, “Abraham’s problems are not his. It’s a team issue. It’s our problem.”
“For the media everything is about shots, stats, but we need actual goals otherwise we don’t win. If you won games based on the number of chances we’d be sitting on top of the league table.”
“The important thing is for us to address this issue without looking at it from an individual point of view,” he continued.
“I keep saying the same: we need to have more discipline in the way we play. When two players lose the ball, it produces consequences for the whole team.”
“Our best games that we have played in this year and a half are games of great concentration, of great respect for the game plan, of great organization in team dynamics. There are very few games that we have won thanks to individual situations or outside of what we had prepared.”
