Mourinho: We deserved to win even if we didn't play great

La Roma pareggia 1-1 all'Olimpico con la Sampdoria. Queste sono le impressioni di José Mourinho al termine della partita.

Jose Mourinho admitted his side had not played to their best after Roma drew 1-1 with Sampdoria on Wednesday evening.

Substitute Eldor Shomurodov scored five minutes after coming on to eventually break the deadlock at the Stadio Olimpico - only for Manolo Gabbiadini to equalise for the grateful visitors minutes later.

Here's what Mourinho had to say after the contest...

Your team finally found the breakthrough after showing a lot of patience – how frustrating is it not to have come away with all three points?

“I’m not sure we showed that much patience. We did not play well. We deserved to win, yes, mainly because of the way we played in the second half before we made it 1-0 and then after it was 1-1.

“We tried, we played with intensity and we tried to win and we dominated the play without creating too many clear chances. But it was an ugly game, because the side that wanted to win it didn’t play well and because the side that didn’t want to win played the way they did and got rewarded for that with a point.”

Did the team come into this one a bit tired after their dominant performance in Bergamo?

“Perhaps, although that is somewhat normal. Even Sampdoria have a squad that allows their coach to pick two different sides and pick one of them each time they play. So it’s possible [they were tired]. But, in the second half it didn’t seem too much like that. In the first half, perhaps so.

“In the first half the team seemed a bit slow and lacking courage, they struggled to find the right angles topress high and when we did have the ball there was a lack of concentration – losing the ball a lot through silly mistakes.

“Sometimes these things are down to tiredness, if not a lack of quality. So it could have been tiredness. To sum it up, we deserved to win but we didn’t play well.”

What sort of mistakes do you not want to see from your players in the second half of the season?

“Before the game I told the team that you can play badly and you can play well, you can win or you can lose – but there are some things that once you have picked them up you should never lose: against Atalanta we had that courage and that desire to press and win and play and so the regret today is that I didn’t see the same attitude.

“Perhaps that is partly down to tiredness, which seems understandable to me. I always back my players, I will always stand beside them and I don’t want to be too critical of them. But we didn’t play well. On the other side, though, clearly we were facing a team that didn’t come to play. Don’t take that as a criticism of my opposite number, but Sampdoria employed their style and started wasting time from the first minute. They did that a lot.

“And that gives a team a sense of calm that they shouldn’t have. Then, after the game was 1-1 again, there was once again only one side that was trying to win the game while they put everyone behind the ball and were happy with a point. Well done to them.”

Do you think something will change with your tactical setup when Lorenzo Pellegrini returns?

“We’ll see. The main thing is that he will be back. And if everything goes well during the break – I’m talking about Covid here – then I think it will only be Leonardo Spinazzola who is still not yet available. So that will give us a few more options, as we are a team that needs a bit more of everything.”

If you had to sum up the first half of the season with an Instagram post, what photo would you choose for it?

“A very normal photo, because it seems a very normal league table to me: Inter ahead, Milan ahead, Juventus ahead, Napoli ahead, Atalanta ahead. So it wouldn’t be an amazing post with a million likes. It would be very normal, because the standings look very normal to us.”