Roma coach Jose Mourinho was delighted with their thumping 4-0 win against Bodo/Glimt.
Tammy Abraham opened the scoring on five minutes, followed by a superb Nicolò Zaniolo hat-trick for the final 4-0 result, seeing Roma reach the Europa Conference League semifinal 5-2 on aggregate.
Mourinho said, “Being in the semi-final is the most important thing, but the way we played from the first minute with high press, intensity, quality playing out from the back, we all felt the game was ours even at 2-0.
“Even after the first leg when we lost 2-1, I always had the sensation we were superior. We are a stronger team, it is frankly unacceptable we only managed to beat this side at the fourth attempt, but it was the most important. It was 2-1 for them, it ended 5-2 for us.
“It’s fantastic, the people have this empathy and mutual passion with the team. Now we go to Napoli, so if Napoli want to win the Scudetto, we want to take fifth place.”
He continued: “Playing is good, winning is fantastic. Playing well and losing is not something that anyone likes, only those who defend themselves with the idea they have an identity, their team has an identity, but then they don’t win anything.
“I believe Roma play a lot better than people give us credit for. It’s too easy to say we have character, we are unbeaten for a long time because we are organised, but the truth is we play a lot better than what people say.
“There was no doubt today. I told my team at half-time that it wasn’t about humiliating the opposition, winning 6-1 the way they did in Norway, it’s just about reaching the semi-final. Some fatigue set in later on, naturally, but the team deserved it, we are now 12 games into the Conference League and it’s tough playing on Thursdays and the weekend, but we are here waving the Italian flag in Europe.”
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