De Rossi: “Salernitana are formidable against big clubs, but we’re going to the Arechi to win"

For a sportsman like yourself, what do you make of Jannik Sinner’s success?

“It’s exciting. Italians are always competing at the top levels of various sports around the world. [Tennis] is a very popular sport. It’s talked about a lot. It’s international. The fact that a nice Italian lad – I don’t know him, but he really seems like a nice person – is making us feel doubly proud about the image we send out and a champion we can all root for. A few months ago, I went on holiday to New York. My wife and I set our alarms so we could watch the matches in the Turin Masters. It was the same for the Davis Cup.

“I’ve got loads of things to do today so I don’t think I’ll be able to watch the match. But I hope he plays a great final.”

Let’s talk about your next game: have you got anyone back? Is there a date for Chris Smalling’s return? Have you decided on your hierarchy of goalkeepers?

“I’d already decided that when I got here. I kept the last few months in mind. I think Rui [Patricio] made some great saves. One match won’t change my opinion on the goalkeeper or on any hierarchy. You’ve got to have a well-established hierarchy, I think. It’s not final though. You have to look at performance and how they’re training.

“I’m happy with both of them. I didn’t know Mile [Svilar] as much but he impressed me. A mistake won’t change my mind on Rui. He’s saved us on many occasions over the last few months. I still watched the games, despite not being here. He’s completely focused on what he has to do on Monday, not on the past, so I’m very calm.

“On Smalling, he’s training with Renato [Sanches] and Marash Kumbulla. They’re following their path. We’re monitoring them. The medical and rehabilitative staff monitor them every day. I go there and watch them training. It seems like their movements are loosening up. We’ll take it week by week . I think they’ll start doing little bits with us from next week. It’s still a bit early to give you a date for when they’ll be back on the pitch. These long injuries need to be assessed every day.”

What are Salernitana like as a team? What difficulties do you face when you’re up against a team that’s fighting to stay up?

“There are more difficulties. They’ve obviously had some problems if they’re at the bottom of the table. There are more difficulties because in the second half of the season, points mean more and the teams that are fighting to stay up always give an extra something.

“We’ll be playing at their ground. I’ve never played at Salerno and I’m curious because from the outside it seems like an exciting stadium, especially the Curva. They’ll definitely have an extra push. It’s a shame we won’t have that extra push from our fans. It’s disappointing but we’ll be playing for them too.

“Salernitana have a great coach and they’ve got some great skill, especially in attack and further up the pitch. They’ve  got a lot of great players, so we need to be very careful. They’re diverse. They’ve got some more explosive players and some who are bit older but top-quality, like my friends [Antonio] Candreva and [Federico] Fazio. I don’t know if Federico will be there, but they’ve got a really interesting team. It’ll definitely be a tough game.

“I would’ve never thought Salernitana would be so far down the table because in my opinion they’ve got great players. You can see that by the fact that they lost at the last minute against Juve and Napoli. They were drawing against Inter until Lautaro Martinez came on. They beat Lazio at home, and they drew against Milan… They were formidable, especially against the big clubs. We’re going there to win. We know that we’re a really strong team.”

It's an important match because it could be a turning point for away match results, which have been negative so far. How will you get over that fear, that emotional problem? Jose Mourinho wanted a team of bandits: what team do you want?

“You’re quoting the coach, and you should ask him what he experienced at that time and why he saw fear in the players’ eyes. Honestly, I make my assessments from what I see, and I see players with personality.

“Even if I look a bit further back and think about their past, I see players that played away games and won. They took us to the Europa League final more than once when playing away from home.

“[Bryan] Cristante and [Leonardo] Spinazzola won the Euros playing an away match against England in the final.

“There are times when things go badly at home, other times things go badly away. They’re different phases of the season. I like ‘a team of bandits’ as a motto because you need that edge and nastiness in football that helps you earn points in ugly and dirty matches.

“Roma is a team of great players. From a personality point of view, I don’t think I’ve got a team that lacks personality. Actually, the opposite…”

Cristante is back tomorrow. You had a lot of nice things to say about him in your farewell conference. How does Roma change with him or Paredes?

“I think they can play very well together but Cristante is a pillar of our team, our dressing room, and our National Team.

“[At my farewell conference] I was referring to him as a human being. The question was: do you need to be from Rome to progress in Roma. No because there’s one who’s not from Rome and he does his job in the way I’d want everyone to do their job. He’s a serious professional, he helps his team-mates, and he’s a great player. I continue to be amazed by Bryan. I’m happy he’s back. I wanted him in the first match.

“He changes things on the pitch, more than the formation. Some patterns change. Maybe Leo has more quality and Cristante has more dynamism, physicality, he shoots more and makes more runs. Something changes, but in a way that it would change if you put on any other player. If you play [Romelu] Lukaku, [Sardar] Azmoun or [Andrea] Belotti, something changes then too. It changes if you switch goalkeeper.

“The dynamic will change due to the technical characteristics of the player, but our gameplay won’t change. We’ve got lots of technical players, who are full of personality and energy that I think can play together too.”

How are Dybala, Huijsen and Mancini after coming back from injury and bans? How is Aouar after the African Cup?

“[Paulo] Dybala seemed alright over the last few days. He’s fully training with the others and he’s looking better compared to the first week when he seemed tired. He said himself he wasn’t 100%.

“Dean [Huijsen] hasn’t done anything for a couple of days, but I think he’s fine. He trained with us yesterday but we didn’t do that much. He’ll train again today and I think he’ll be back with us, no problem.

“Mancio is fit. I liked the state he was in physically and I liked that he got involved with our suggestions because he’s never trained with us before, he’d only watched the sessions. I like how he threw himself into it with the right enthusiasm.

“[Houssem] Aouar has come back from the African Cup. He wasn’t on holiday so we can say he’s been training. He told me about travelling, having to do night journeys, and the fact he hasn’t slept much. But he’s an active footballer and he played a couple of days ago. He’s definitely ready to play.”

People say that coaches need the summer to implement a certain type of play. However, we’re already seeing some changes you’ve made. Is that thanks to the lads being particularly receptive? Where are you at in terms of preparation?

“I think pre-season and a longer period of time help you to ingrain certain concepts. The first day you take a step, the second day you take another, and again on the third day. You’ve got to have some confidence. You have to hope that they already know something. So, I’ll tie that into the other part of the question: it’s all thanks to them.

“Anyone that knows me knows that no one can touch my Spal lads. I’m still in contact with them, I still love them just as I did the first day I trained them. You can see, however, that it took a bit more time to drill my ideas into them.

“But here it’ll soon be them drilling the ideas into me. They’re fully-formed footballers. They’ve played with a hundred different coaches over their careers and they know a lot of things from a tactical and footballing perspective. They’ve got incredible skill.

“At Spal we saw some things happen after a couple of weeks, after three or four matches. I’ll always be thankful to them because I had fun watching them play. At that club it was probably my fault because I wasn’t experienced enough.

“Here, however, you say something and they take it on board straight away. If you see some great games, it’s thanks to them. They were also trained by a great coach for three years. They’re a group that knows their football, they train well and they’re fit.

“I just give a few ideas that I think will help us bring home as many points as possible and as many wins as possible. It seems they like these ideas and that it doesn’t take much for them to adopt them.

“I’m trusting. It takes time to see a change. Time helps. Especially having time without decisive games every four or five days.”