TMW
“It certainly wasn’t our best match, we made life difficult for ourselves.” Roma coach Alessandro Spugna made his debut in the mixed zone like this after the victory on penalties in the Italian Cup over Fiorentina: “The great merit was to recover a match that was practically lost and instead the heart and determination ensured that the result it was someone else. The girls made sure we managed to recover the result and then in extra time, as often happens, we had the best opportunities to win it. Then we went to penalties and Camelia (Ceasar Editor’s note) was good at saving and the girls who shot, Troelsgaard was very cold. Then it doesn’t matter if we play the finals well, even though I like to do it, but in the end we brought home the trophy which was the most important thing.”
Roma shows that they always have room for improvement
“The fact of having to improve must be a constant, we cannot think of having reached the highest level because we won two championships and now the Italian Cup or the Super Cup last year. We must continue to raise the bar and today’s match shows that the others do not stand by and watch, but are growing. Today Fiorentina played an important match and I congratulate them, their coach and the staff. We have to continue to improve, now let’s go on holiday and then we’ll start working again.”
Tiredness made itself felt this evening
“The approach wasn’t the best, then there’s a bit of physical and mental tiredness when you play so many games and so many competitions reaching the end. They were good at recovering from a really, really complicated game, and this is also a credit because you can’t always win 4-5 to zero and not all teams are capable of certain recoveries. We were good at doing this.”
How important is it to have this support?
“I’ve always said it, the crowd in Rome was huge and they also pushed us to 3-1. They continued to cheer and encourage us, you can feel this on the pitch and the girls were good at being carried away and this victory is for them who followed us on all pitches.”
What did you say to the girls before extra time?
“I said that we had to play with greater calm even if it wasn’t easy because tiredness increases and clarity is lacking, but paradoxically I also said to slow down the pace because with the quality we have we had to be more precise in our plays. And these plays would have allowed us to have more opportunities as then happened with two or three important scoring opportunities. There was no longer any need to press too much, to run, 60 meters every time otherwise we wouldn’t have made it and in fact we ended up with a lot of players with cramps.”
After two defeats, is it a bit of liberation to win this Cup?
“Probably yes because it was the third final and I had lost the other two, at 3-1 I also thought that it was only my fault, that I’m the one who doesn’t bring luck or am not good at doing this type of competition because it was truly incredible . We are happy for this trophy which has been missing for a few years, it was the fourth final and therefore we were missing something. We had to try to win it, we succeeded and that’s okay.”