Pioli: ‘Roma more quality and determination than Milan’ | OneFootball

Stefano Pioli admits Roma deserved to reach the Europa League semi-finals, slamming Milan for lacking ‘quality and determination’ in both legs.

The Rossoneri lost the first leg 1-0 to a Gianluca Mancini header and immediately allowed the defender to score another at the Stadio Olimpico this evening, followed swiftly by a Paulo Dybala curler for 3-0 on aggregate.

Things seemed to go their way after that, because Romelu Lukaku sustained a knee injury and Zeki Celik was sent off for hacking down Rafael Leao on the counter-attack, so Dybala was substituted to introduce a new defender.

However, Milan were unable to break a side down to 10 men for an hour until the Matteo Gabbia header at the 86th minute, so their last remaining target for the season has disappeared.

“We leave this tournament with regrets. Roma put in more quality and more determination over the two legs, so they deserved to go through,” Pioli told Sky Sport Italia.

“We certainly lacked quality, as aside from perhaps not creating very clear-cut opportunities, we did have situations in the box that we should’ve made more of. We should’ve made more of the fact they were down to 10 men, but we didn’t have the quality or determination to overturn a result like that after going 2-0 down.”

Mile Svilar barely had to make saves on the night, as if anything Mike Maignan had to keep the scoreline down.

“We didn’t have the right intensity, we should’ve moved the ball around much quicker, not try to rush things, but we weren’t precise in the final ball and didn’t have the quality to finish the chances we did create.”

Pioli was asked to analyse the two early goals, as in the first Mancini was quickest to react on the rebound from Dybala hitting the upright, on the second Lukaku bullied Gabbia.

“The first goal we didn’t spot Mancini’s run early enough. On the second, there were more of us and we should’ve closed them down. As I said, we have to admit we didn’t play at the level that we hoped and wanted to show tonight.”

Rafael Leao attracted a lot of the criticism after the first leg, but Theo Hernandez was also disappointing.

“After defeats like this, it cannot just be about individuals not performing up to their standards, there’s more to it. Roma played well, but we could’ve emerged from these two ties with a better result and we didn’t do that because we did not raise our level.

“Roma are well set out, we were inefficient in the two phases. When you concede this many goals in so few chances, and have 40 odd shots on goal and score only with Gabbia on a corner, that too means our quality was not up to par.”

It is not the mood they wanted to go into Monday’s Derby della Madonnina, where an Inter victory would mathematically seal the Scudetto for their rivals.