Mancini: I gave my all to try and help the team

“We played the game aware of the fact that we're short on numbers at the moment," the defender said. "The boss encouraged us and told us to give everything out there. We ran hard and fought hard. The penalty decision was an injustice. Chris [Smalling] clearly got hit in the face. You can't have mistakes like that happening at international level.”

How did you find playing in midfield?

“I enjoyed it, thanks to my team-mates – they helped me by calling 'man on' and with my positioning. The boss told me I'd be playing there the other day and we looked at the various movements and positions. I have to improve the positioning of my body but I gave my all to try and help the team.”

Was that more like the real Roma today?

“Gladbach are a very good, very strong side – they're top of the German league. We put all of our effort into it and have no regrets – that's how it is when you give 100%. The result was determined by that penalty decision. If the referee hadn't made that mistake, we would have got the three points. It's done now so we'll just try to play the same way when we go to Germany. Hopefully we'll have a few players back by then.”

In the meantime you play AC Milan on Sunday...

“We'll start preparing for that one tomorrow. We need points in Serie A, so we have to get going again.”