Roma boss Daniele de Rossi has stated that his side will continue to believe in progressing to the final of the Europa League, despite a 2-0 loss to Bayer Leverkusen in the semi-final first leg.

A defensive error in the first half saw Florian Wirtz open the scoring for Leverkusen and in the second half, Robert Andrich scored a terrific long-range goal to double the lead for the German champions. The Giallorossi now have a huge task at hand to end Leverkusen’s unbeaten run in all competitions and then win the game and progress to the final.

De Rossi remains hopeful that Roma can make a miracle happen in the second leg, revealing that they will continue to believe till the end of the second leg.

He told the media: “Confidence is in the game of football. We have to do a feat, winning on a field where they have never lost but which is within our power. We know that we will be a little exposed, but we have nothing to lose and we will go and do the our game. With a game similar to the first half and with a little more luck, everything would change. We will continue to believe in the last 90 minutes.”

De Rossi also stated that Roma should have been better at keeping the ball by giving Leverkusen lesser counter-attacking opportunities.

He said: “In the first half we played the game we were supposed to, but we could have been cleaner in managing the ball to give them fewer counterattacks. Sometimes the incidents helped us, today we weren’t able to score a goal and they punished us by taking the lead, it becomes difficult to play with them.”

Leverkusen haven’t lost even once this season and a loss would be the first of the season.

Kaustubh Pandey I GIFN