Mourinho: "We must think like a big team"

Roma barely gave Torino a sniff today. Was that where Roma won the game?

“Games are won when you score a goal more than your opponents. Whether it's 1-0 or 5-4, the objective is the same: score one more than the other team and you win the match. That goes for other sports too, not just football. You try to win as much as you can with your qualities and your problems, by trying to hide your problems and making the most of your qualities.”

Roma are in third place now, well in the hunt for a Champions League spot.

“Are you sure Juventus don't have 59 points?”

In that case Roma would be fourth.

“Exactly. This is Italy.”

Which team are you most worried about in the battle for a Champions League spot?

“Ourselves. We must think like a big team and a big team doesn't sacrifice any competition. A big team doesn't lose a match to have a better chance of winning the next one. And that's our problem. We have a squad with limitations. We're in the quarter-finals of a European competition that looks more like the Champions League than the Europa League and we're playing three games a week again. That's difficult for us.

“I'm not able to think with a small-team mentality. I'm not able to say that the Udinese game is more important than Feyenoord. And nor can I say the opposite. We're taking one game at a time and we'll see where our limits are. A few weeks ago we lost [Rick] Karsdorp for the rest of the season and today we may have lost [Ola] Solbakken for the rest of the campaign. That's one of our limits.

“However, we also have many strengths and one of the things I've been trying to do since I came here is to think big. We lost in the Coppa Italia, but only because sometimes you lose games in football – not because we threw it away. The same thing will happen in the Europa League: either we'll advance to the semi-finals or Feyenoord will have shown themselves to be better than us over the two legs.”

You opted for two pacy players in support of Paulo Dybala today. Was that how you wanted to play or did you choose to rest Tammy Abraham and Andrea Belotti? And what did you make of your attack, with Dybala coming short and Solbakken and Stephan El Shaarawy running in behind? Personally I liked it a lot.

“Thank you. I think I deserve a bit of positive feedback every now and then. It was a difficult choice. We took it made partly because my players and I felt we needed people who were good in one v ones, and the quickest we have are Solbakken and El Shaarawy, and partly because we were up against an [Ivan] Juric side. He's very good at setting his teams up and you often find that when a centre-back plays against a centre forward, the defender puts him in his pocket. The idea with Paulo was to create superiority, to keep the ball more and play balls in behind.

“It did mean we were lacking a bit of character, though: we had [Nemanja] Matic, Lorenzo [Pellegrini] and [Roger] Ibanez on the bench. Solbakken and Diego [Llorente] were only starting their second game.

“Nonetheless, we felt that was the best strategy. We could have done with scoring a second goal because at 2-0 it would have been a different game. I'd also like to say that we had a young referee today who used the same yardstick for them and for us. He tried to let play continue. I liked him a lot.”

Did you want to spare Belotti a match that would have been difficult for him emotionally? And are you going to watch Lazio v Juve?

“I won't watch it because we'll be on the plane back to Rome. I explained my decision to Belotti and he gave me a Belotti answer. I told him why he didn't play and his answer is all I'm interested in: 'The main thing is Roma won.' That's a Belotti answer. My explanation remains between me and him.”