Jose Mourinho hands out compliments to Vitesse. Mourinho’s AS Roma prevented an extension against Vitesse in the Conference League on Thursday evening thanks to a goal by Tammy Abraham in injury time. It became 1-1 after a previous 0-1 victory by Roma in Arnhem. Roma’s game was not impressive and, according to Mourinho, that was due to Vitesse’s good performance in Stadio Olimpico.
Mourinho acknowledges that Roma and Vitesse did not differ much from each other. “Eventually one of the teams goes into the tubes. Fortunately, we are,” the trainer responds to Sky Italy† “Previously everyone said that we don’t have enough willpower, that we couldn’t hold on to the lead, it was about the disaster against Juventus (3-4 defeat, ed.), about the game in which we let CSKA Sofia come back from 0-3 to 2 -3… Now it’s about our ability to hold up under pressure and score in the last minutes, that’s becoming a trend with us, we haven’t lost eight or nine games now (seven, ed.). “
† BOOM! Maximilian Wittek: 0-1 to @MyVitesse †
† ESPN
† #ROMVIT #UECL pic.twitter.com/QayGUWPp0q— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) March 17, 2022
Maximilian Wittek opened the score after more than an hour with a beautiful long shot. An extension therefore seemed imminent, although Roma did look for the equalizer. “With a 0-1 deficit, a dangerous situation, it can be tempting to wait for extra time. I’m glad we didn’t do that and wanted to force a decision in regular time,” Mourinho praises his team. “I also have to say that Vitesse is very good. I didn’t even know the name of their trainer, he is fantastic! I congratulated him afterwards. If a team plays as well as Vitesse did, it is because of a fantastic trainer. is not that we played that badly; they played very well. They had players like Daka who were constantly moving from left to right to center and got us in trouble.” Who Mourinho means by ‘Daka’ is the question. Perhaps it is about Eli Dasa or Danilho Doekhi. Dasa mainly stayed on the right wing but occasionally moved towards the center, as can be seen from his heatmap; Doekhi was frequently found both in the center and on the right flank. The same was true for Riechedly Bazoer.
“I am not happy with the way we played today with many players who also have to be there against Lazio on Sunday, while Maurizio Sarri (Lazio coach, ed.) could smoke cigarettes tonight. But it was because Vitesse was very good Mourinho emphasizes. “We never took control of the game to get a result that we would continue with. We wanted to go for the win. Until Vitesse’s beautiful goal, we were not in danger. I informed the players at half-time that there were three There were things to be concerned about: standard situations, the fact that they always have a defender who is not under pressure and the fact that sometimes we looked vulnerable when we lost the ball. The problem tonight was that we lost the ball easily.”
“Our attackers constantly lost them. We also suffered unnecessary loss of ball in midfield and back positions. It was a bad game technically. Perhaps the tactics seemed to be the problem, but it was the technique,” the Portuguese points out. “We defended well and showed character. I can’t say we deserved it one hundred percent, but over two matches we deserved a little more. The match was balanced, just like Ajax – Benfica, where one goal arrivederci meant. We were in such a situation, but we were not afraid that the same would happen to us.”