Spalletti: 'Roma are back'

By Football Italia staff

Coach Luciano Spalletti is happy to declare that 'Roma are back', but admits he “wasn't 100 per cent confident” at first.

The 57-year-old was reappointed to his old team last January, and he did so well in lifting them out of their crisis that many touted him to become the next Azzurri Coach.

"The squad worked well over the last few months and the players rediscovered their form,” he said, in an interview published on Roma's official site. “That in turn got the Giallorossi fans behind the team again with renewed enthusiasm. It’s been a positive season. It’s fair to say that Roma are back.

“The team was going through a tough time and unfortunately that happens in football. You have to acknowledge the strength of the opposition in Serie A this year though plus the fact that any side can have ups and downs over the course of a season.

“As well as all that, this season was strange in the sense that four or five teams were top at one point or another, so mental strength and a desire to work hard were even more decisive than in other years. The lads worked well and that’s how we were able to climb the table.”

The Coach was then asked if he knew he was going to have such a powerful impact when picking up the team.

“You’re never 100% confident before you actually do something. Actually if you go back to the start, we didn’t do well in the first two games. This is a sign that we made some mistakes at the beginning, but that’s OK in the sense that you need a period in which to try some things out.

“However, the main thing is action. You need to do something to try to get back on track, seeing as the quality of the players was already there and that is plain to see. I’m not the kind of person who turns up and says that everything was down to me because ultimately it’s the players who are out there on the pitch.

“Obviously we were lucky in somehow pointing the qualities of these players in the right direction. The players are fundamental but it’s also important that you get them working together.

“As for whether I already had the right solutions in mind, I didn’t have anything pre-planned but I had a few ideas. It’s certainly not easy to communicate your thoughts to a squad of 25 players that you have at Roma without having done pre-season and a lot of preparation but it is possible, as we saw over these months. “I already knew the majority of players here — Daniele De Rossi, Radja Nainggolan, Maicon, Seydou Keita and Edin Dzeko to mention a few — but I was also able to make some new discoveries with Lucas Digne, Emerson and Salih Ucan, all of whom I hadn’t seen in the flesh before. In general, I found a lot of quality players for me to work with at such a big club like Roma.”

The Tuscan Coach went on to discuss the reasoning that drove him back to the capital in what many believed was a bold move.

“Some decisions are guided exclusively by reason and others are influenced by sentiment — mine was the latter. As for the risk factor, that’s always present in my job and I believe that any coach has to be prepared for the fact that things might not go well, because this is a possibility.

“Of course, the risk gets bigger and bigger since we coaches are required to do nothing else but win. In my case, if you manage to qualify for the Champions League in Serie A you’ve done your job and you’ve done it well, especially since famous teams like Inter, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio all failed to reach this target.

“When you’re in charge of one of these teams you really have to fight to get into the top spots, so that means the clubs which finish ahead of you have to do really well. Roma did well, so did Napoli and Juventus did fantastically.”

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