Difficult moment for the English team (4 defeats in the last 7 games). The Italian coach: “The good news? There are no new injuries. The important thing is to find the right energy before Thursday, when we will play a historic match that we deserved to play”
What’s happening at Brighton? The 3-0 defeat at Fulham in the last match before the first leg of the Europa League round of 16 against Roma sent the alarm bells ringing loudly for a team that remains in the top tier of the Premier League but which in the last months he no longer manages to enchant (here is the analysis of the double challenge). Roberto De Zerbi has the enormous alibi of the series injuries that continue to haunt him (“The only good news is that we have no new injuries,” he said after the Craven Cottage flop), but he also reaches the highlight of the season with the team in pieces, physically and mentally.
ROME
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“I have nothing to prove to the Olimpico or to anyone in particular – he said -: I have to prove something to myself and my players every day, not to others. I’m proud to work in the Premier League, to do it with these players: I know their human level and I know they will react as best they can.” Reaction will be the word in the next few days as we prepare for the match against Roma: Brighton arrives with two knockouts in a row in which they didn’t score, two different defeats away between Wolverhampton and London (where the seagulls haven’t won yet this year) but with the aggravating circumstance of involution. It’s not enough that the Olimpico will be missing, among others, the top scorer of the group stage João Pedro, a striker who with De Zerbi went from the English Championship to a place in the Brazilian national team, and Karou Mitoma, the Japanese player who is the star of Brighton lost until the end of the season due to a back problem: practically all the key players in the team arrive at the match against the Giallorossi with some physical problem, so much so that the Italian coach spoke openly about the need to manage them, starting with captain Lewis Dunk, one of the best of the season went out at Fulham after an hour with the game still in the balance.
LEVEL
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Brighton are currently lacking results: the two defeats in a row become 4 in the last 7 games. Continuity has been missing all year: the last two consecutive victories in all competitions came at the end of November, they haven’t even been in the Premier League since September. “It is a difficult situation for us, but it is something that I am not saying today: I said it in September and I repeated it clearly especially in January – said De Zerbi -. Now there is nothing we can do: we have to go forward, play better and with a different energy, find the right motivation because in the last 3 months of the season we are playing a lot. We have many problems, but also the ability to play better and we have to do it. The important thing is to find the right energy before Thursday, when we will play a historic match that we deserved to play. We are not a big club and every day we have to fight to maintain the level we are at: I’m not referring to the team on the pitch, but to the entire club. It’s the first time that Brighton are fighting for two consecutive championships to qualify for the cups, it is the first time that we are in the round of 16 of the Europa League, that we are playing for the first time. We need to understand if we are capable of remaining at this level, or we will go back to playing a match per week. It’s a challenge every day: for me, my staff, the players, the whole club. We must always remember who we are and where we came from: Brighton is not Roma, Liverpool or West Ham. I think we can regain energy and motivation if we remember who we are and how we arrived in Europe.”
PRINCIPLES
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Brighton may be in difficulty, but De Zerbi does not intend to abandon his principles: those of a team that thrives on ball possession, on dominating the game, on attracting opposing pressure even at the cost of making mistakes. And the coach doesn’t even intend to abandon the 4-2-3-1 around which he has built the last two historic seasons of the seagulls, unless he is forced by injuries as has happened too many times recently. At the Olimpico, De Zerbi intends to play his game, make the team play in that unique and admired way that he has ended up in the sights of the big clubs, from Liverpool who must replace the legend Jürgen Klopp to Barcelona who will lose Xavi to the new Manchester United considering whether to replace Ten Hag. The manager isn’t interested in this for now: all that matters is Brighton and letting him end a historic season in the best possible way. A season that now passes through the Olimpico, for the comparison with his friend De Rossi, for a new match in which the seagulls are the freshman who reached the round of 16 by winning the most difficult group of the Europa League, finishing with 4 successes in a row without conceding a goal. Europe remains the stage on which Brighton would never have thought of performing until a few years ago: it will also be in a difficult moment, overwhelmed by injuries, by the new level to compete with, by matches every 3 days and by the difficulty that does not never stops rising. But he has every intention of getting noticed. Even in Rome, even at the Olimpico, even after two defeats in a row without scoring.
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