De Rossi admits Inter’s derby wins gave Roma ideas on how to beat Milan

Roma boss Daniele De Rossi has admitted that he watched AC Milan’s games against Inter to get some ideas on how to combat Stefano Pioli’s style.

Milan have given themselves it all to do in the return fixture as they lost the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final tie 1-0 against Roma at San Siro on Thursday night.

It is certainly another blow for the Rossoneri who have seen their seven-game winning run ended, and now they must win at the Stadio Olimpico in one week if they are to stand a chance of getting through.

The only goal of the game came early on in the first half as Gianluca Mancini was given acres of space to head in, but Olivier Giroud really should have levelled the tie late in the game when he rattled the crossbar from about six yards out, and there was a controversial late incident too.

De Rossi spoke to the reporters present in the conference room at San Siro after his side’s victory, and his comments were relayed by MilanNews.

Did you re-watch the derbies that Milan lost to try and replicate in today’s performance?

“I’ve seen a lot of matches, my staff has seen a lot of them; they also work at night to find details that can perhaps solve the matches. Great ideas also come from teams that have lost against Milan. We also watched the derbies obviously, but I watched Milan a lot.”

Your full-backs had a great game…

“Leao and Pulisic are not normal players, the full-backs played a super game and I’m very satisfied with them.”

Playing El Shaarawy on the right was a great move…

“We’re happy, we prepared the game in the round: everything had to go well to win against Milan. I think that with strong teams you have to keep the ball more, because maybe Leao gets the ball 20 ties instead of 50 and he hurts you less. Then when they pressed us hard it was important not to falter and go at Lukaku: best performance from Lukaku today.”

Four clean sheets in a row…

“Defensive solidity starts from everything, starting from giving him the ball a little less than we are used to keeping it. Then we raised the level of attention. It takes time to test the concepts.

“At the Coverciano course they tell us that you can’t think of not conceding goals; Ulivieri tells us to choose how to concede goals. It takes time to assimilate things, but in my opinion we are coming out well.

“I told the team that I won’t accept an inch in less than the attitude seen in the derby, then we can also play well or badly…”

How will you manage the second leg?

“They certainly thought they could win at home, to then be able to manage the return leg. So their attitude could be the same, but if we play 90 minutes at the Olimpico like the last 10 here we’re doomed.”