Gasperini hails 'perfect game' after Stuttgart win

This is what the boss had to say:

You talked up Niccolo Pisilli before the game, describing him as the prototype talented youngster who through hard work could become part of a core group of 14-15 first-choice players for Roma.

“Of course. And I must say that he's shown his quality before on other occasions, including last season. I think he's improved a lot. Regardless of his goals tonight, he turned in a top performance. He's reached a high level of maturity despite his young age.”

Could we say that goals like the ones he scored are similar to what we used to see from Marco Tardelli?

“There are similarities. Tardelli was a very strong player too. Pisilli is similar. He may not have the pace Tardelli had but he times his runs superbly. He's always scored goals and he strikes the ball so well. He's certainly a very good player to have.”

You made seven changes to the team that performed very well in the victory against Torino and the results proved you right. How did you come to that decision?

“Several things. First of all, I get to see the lads in training so I've been able to see the improvement in Pisilli and also [Daniele] Ghilardi, who had an excellent game tonight. [Jan] Ziolkowski has a lot of promise – he might not be up to the full 90 minutes yet but he can certainly play a good part of the match. They're very young players who are still developing physically.

“I also wanted to test the fitness of some players who didn't play so much in the last game, like [Matias] Soule and [Lorenzo] Pellegrini, who's only just come back. It turned out to be the perfect game for us and we managed to get the best out of everyone. It was a tricky match against an excellent team, and important for our position in the standings. It was a real test for us.”

How far can this Roma side go? You never seem to draw and you win a lot of games. I think that's a great quality to have.

“It is. Sometimes people say that if we'd drawn a few more games, we'd be even higher, but likewise if we'd won a few less, we'd be a lot lower. With three points at stake, you have to go for the win and we always do, regardless of who we're playing. We're not able to play for a draw and I don't want us to settle for a point. The only way to take big strides forward is by winning games. We've done well both in Serie A and in Europe.

“We still need to get better results against the very top teams but we've gone close. We haven't always lost by big margins. We're getting there and if we can just manage to get results against the top sides we'll become even better.”

You've got some new signings who will soon be available to play in the Europa League too, like Donyell Malen and Robinio Vaz. We've also seen Paulo Dybala looking better. What does the future hold for your attack? Are you closer to your idea of football?

“To be honest, we're still often short in attack. Tonight we ended up with [Devyne] Rensch as our right forward. We're often missing important players, like [Stephan] El Shaarawy, and we don't have [Artem] Dovbyk up front anymore either.

“It's true that we've brought in two players in the same position. One of them has already shown how good he us and we're happy about that. The other is a young kid with a bright future who we'll try to get to know better now. It would be great if we could do something else but it's not easy in January because the winter transfer market is always tricky. However, we have to consider that with five subs all the teams – and especially the ones we're competing with – are very well equipped, both in terms of numbers and quality-wise.”