Di Francesco: Positives to take and lessons to learn

The goalless draw, which clinched the Serie A title for the Bianconeri, means the Giallorossi still need a positive result against Sassuolo on the final weekend to guarantee third place in the final standings.

Juventus are celebrating tonight, but Roma had a good season too...

"We had an extraordinary run in the Champions League. Still, we're left with a bit of a sour taste in the mouth; we did some great things but we also could have done even more. We had a difficult patch in the league but we grew from our mistakes.

"I was pleased with the squad's mentality and approach, trying to take the game to Juve tonight while we had 11 men on the pitch. We just lacked a bit of quality in playing the final pass."

During January's difficult period, you said that the squad had perhaps let qualification for the Champions League knock-out rounds get to their heads. What was the mistake you should have avoided?

"Complacency is, more than anything, an unconscious reaction, and sometimes it can sneak up on you and you don't realise until it's too late. It was the result of a mix of different factors which we didn't address properly.

"We're still growing as a side but I want to keep looking forward. We're building an identity, a sense of self as a team. We were able to carry Roma forward, in the league and in Europe too, by playing with our heads raised, without fear of our opponents. We can do great things with this sort of mentality."

What do you have to say to those who doubted you and were waiting for you to slip up at the start of the year?

"I don't know why they were expecting me to slip up. It's part of the game, but prejudice is something which really winds me up. I had some luck and also did well to keep my head while working at Trigoria."

In the second half of the season the team really came on, even almost making it all the way to the Champions League final: how satisfied are you?

"I'm happy, it's not an easy competition at all. We need to be strong on the inside, we need to be strong at Trigoria, united as a group through the good times and the bad too. It's easy to work hard when things are going your way, but we need to be able to focus on getting better, even when things are going well, to not get complacent and make sure we're always up for it."

What do you need to do to compete with Juve?

"We need to approach our work in that way: improve on what can be improved, in the knowledge that ahead of us we have a team that has always dominated this competition in the last few years. They've done something extraordinary and to beat them we will need to something special ourselves.

"We hope that we can do it, we must have the desire to compete with them. We've shown that we can do it, maybe more so in Europe than in Italy."