Gennaro Gattuso said ‘I can’t go wrong with my choices, we need to fight and play the best football we can play’, as Milan prepare for the first match in their ‘tour de force’, against Roma away.

After the win against Ludogorets and the progression to the next round of the Europa League, Milan will now have to play a sequence of difficult opponents.

The first is against Roma, who seem to have recovered their form after a low at the beginning of 2018 as they have won their last 3 games in the league.

Before the game, as always, Gattuso held a press conference.

“In the first half against Shakhtar Donetsk Roma played beautiful football, the Ukrainians are one of the best teams in Europe. Roma put them into a lot of difficulty during the first 45 minutes.” Gattuso said. “They are a well-trained team, they can push with their full backs, have a lot of midfield quality.

“I’m not worried about Roma’s defensive abilities. What worries me is their characteristics in attack. We know that they can give us into some difficulties, we have to try to not give them space, otherwise we will pay for it. Tomorrow we need a great performance.”

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The Milan coach was asked about Cengiz Ünder, who is in a very good form after scoring his first goal for Roma against Hellas Verona three weeks ago: “Against SPAL we had Lazzari. He gave us a lot of trouble at the beginning of the game, so we changed some things to handle him better [Gattuso moved Hakan Çalhanoğlu to man-mark the midfielder]. We didn’t prepare the game for one player only, but for each compartment [attack, midfield and defense]. We know about Ünder’s qualities, we hope that we won’t need to make any modifications during the game tomorrow.

“Milan is on the same level as Roma and Arsenal? Everybody is saying that, but that’s ‘bar talk’ in my opinion. Even when we play against smaller teams, we still have to play as if we’re on the same level. We lost a lot of points this season against this type of clubs. For now we just need to prepare the games well.” Gattuso wasn’t here to talk about the other games coming up: “Today I only want to talk about Roma, it’s the game I prepared. We can talk about the other matches, when they take place.”

In the last eleven games, the team was able to keep seven clean sheets and never concede more than one goal per game: “We worked on the defense, there are a lot of good coaches, sometimes you just need to copy-paste their tactics. I watched a lot of other managers, like Giampaolo, Sarri or Allegri. Sometimes you just need to watch what they do and then put that into practice with what you have at your disposal.”

These defensive achievements were also possible thanks to Leonardo Bonucci, who would miss the derby against Inter next week if he gets a yellow card against Roma: “The points against Roma will be the same points as in the derby. Bonucci doesn’t need to worry about getting a yellow card or not, it would hold him back the whole game. Sometimes a tackle is needed and if such a situation occurs, I need him to take action.”

Gattuso also talked about Bonucci’s center back partner, Alessio Romagnoli: “He’s very young and already has a lot of experience in Serie A. He’s an incredible player. It helps that he’s training with continuity, in the last years he had some physical issues. He still can improve a lot, he’s one of the best Italian defenders. He changed a lot in these past 3 months on a mental level. He doesn’t leave anything to chance, takes care of himself and always arrives a bit early. He needs to have a mentality like this, especially because of his past injuries.”

From the defense to the attack: “Against Sampdoria André Silva played with ‘venom’, he didn’t make any mistakes and helped us a lot in the final minutes. When I re-watched the match against Ludogorets, I noticed that he played completely different football than before. With his characteristics, he can express himself better with another striker near him.” Rino also let us know that he already decided which striker he will start tomorrow, without telling us who.

Since Gattuso took over, Milan had been the third best team in Serie A with Udinese, only Napoli and Juventus have done better. This brought back enthusiasm to the fans: “There’s enthusiasm now, but we have to continue like this. At the beginning of the season there were a lot of people in the stadium too, but then it diminished. After the games in Rome we will play two home-matches [the derby with Inter and the Europa League tie with Arsenal] where there will be up to 130 thousand fans at San Siro. We need to do well in all these games, because Milan needs the fans.

“Calabria will be available, yesterday he only did half the training session with us, but today the whole session,” Gattuso continued. “Only Antonelli and Storari won’t be at my disposal, but they will come with the rest of the team to Rome as well, because we will stay there until Wednesday. Besides them, we have recovered everyone, the team is in good condition.”

After the journalists insisted, Gattuso also answered some questions about this upcoming ‘tour de force’: “We’ll have to raise the bar, all these opponents have players that are very strong individually. We’ll have to give our best and realize what level we have reached ourselves.

If I’m scared or excited about this string of games? I don’t know, I only think about tomorrow. I feel pressure, I know we will have to play some hard games. If we want to play at par with them, we still have to improve a few things, but we should be able to do that. I need to field the best line-up possible, I can’t go wrong with my choices. We need to fight and play the best football we can play.”

On the improvement of the team: “We are pretty much where I hoped to be. The squad improved a lot on the ‘concepts’. We run a lot, but that’s not enough, it’s good that we improved on the concepts. We take a lot of shots, also on target, but now we need to work on our finishing.”

“The Champions League chase? In the dressing room I don’t hear talks about that, we think game after game. It’s the best thing we can do, then we see how far we get. In this moment we can’t afford to make mistakes, if we go wrong on two games, it’s over.”

In the end he was asked about ‘Gattusism’: “What’s that? The road is still long, there’s a lot to learn. My teams conceded very few goals, my career shows that. Last season with Pisa we were the team that conceded the least in the last games, then we still got relegated. Now with Milan we also manage to do well in the attack, thanks to the characteristics of the players we have. Teams get built on good defenses, that’s my characteristic and I hope to keep it, but it’s too early to talk about ‘Gattusism’. Let’s leave ‘cholism’ to ‘El Cholo Simeone’.”

Tomorrow at 20:45 CET Milan will play Roma at the Stadio Olimpico. Roma beat Milan 0-2 at the San Siro, when the Montella was coach. This is another chance to show that the team has improved and to come closer to the Champions League spots.