Brighton’s Joel Veltman knows what to expect from Roma in Europa League clash | OneFootball

Brighton defender Joel Veltman spoke ahead of his side’s trip to Rome where they will face Daniele De Rossi’s Roma on Thursday evening.

In an interview with The Athletic, Veltman discussed the challenge that lies ahead of his team in this year’s Europa League Round of 16.

“We have a lot of experience in the squad, players who have already played in the knockout round, this aspect is really positive. Roma are experienced, they have already faced this round before.”

“We have never done it with Brighton, it will be new. If we play with “good blood in our veins” – that’s what we call it – we can win against any team. I haven’t been to Italy much, outside of England and Holland they play with very different systems.”

“From this point of view, Italy is known, if an Italian team takes a 1-0 lead it becomes difficult to come back due to how compact they are. Basically they don’t concede most of the times, so from a tactical point of view the Italian teams and in this case Roma are very good at this.”

“We need to make sure we don’t have to make up for the result once again. If we succeed in Italy, then we have great possibilities coming back home. In Marseille, with around 60,000 people, we had a fantastic atmosphere. As a player, you want to play in those types of stadiums and try to silence the opposing crowd, that’s an objective for us. We know how Italian teams can be tactical, we know that they concede little, they are really good at this. So we have to drag them out of their compact formation and score first.”