Rome, Mourinho: “I want the final. Dybala and Smalling will be there”

From our correspondent Massimo Cecchini

May 17th
– Leverkusen (Germany)

Traffic meant that he arrived at the conference almost an hour late, and for this reason too José Mourinho didn’t seem to be in a good mood. Yet there is no shortage of good news for Rome. “Dybala, El Shaarawy and Smalling are available to play. The question is how long they can do it. The Englishman hasn’t played even a minute and trains separately, Paulo has played about thirty. We have to evaluate how long they can stay on the field: thirty, forty, fifty. Luckily Wijanaldum has played about sixty and then there is also El Shaarawy”.

Already Won

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But the scratch comes. “If I didn’t have the ambition to try to win the Cup, I could say that we have already won it because we are the only semi-finalists who have only played in the Europa League. But this is theory: one of the four will take the Cup home, but it has much more value for a team that has played 14 games as of tomorrow than those built for the Champions League groups, but it is also the beauty of the Europa League. With Betis it was tough, we played the playoffs against a team in the Champions League like Strasbourg, Real Sociedad is already in the Champions League, Feyenoord is already the Dutch champion. Of course, it would be better to play at the Olimpico, it would be a different story. But the first home game against Bayer Leverkusen was mentally difficult for us, knowing that we had to win it.” The fact that bookmakers give Roma favorites for the final victory is decided. “Zero superstitious, zero bookmaker, zero favorite. When you get to the semifinals there is 50% going to the final and 25% winning. This is my only bad luck. But I don’t know which direction the match will take. Hard to tell. We want to get to the final. There is a lot to play, and we talked about this today. With the 1-0, neither a goal from Bayer nor a goal from Roma can decide it immediately: it’s a long time”.

THE FUTURE

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On his personal future he is armored, but he lets it be understood that uncertainty is strong. “My focus is only on the match against Bayer. I don’t even know if we’re going to the final and I know much less about my future.” The corollary is ecumenical. “The present is more important, the past is the past, we don’t know the future. I happened to play two consecutive finals with Porto. I would like to get there, not so much for me. I have become a different person, I think more of others than of myself. I would like it for the fans, who are extraordinary, and for the boys, who are an incredible group. They give absolutely everything, so they deserve a lot, but nobody gives you anything and therefore we will have to play an extraordinary match to get to the final.” A game of Special One.