Francesco Calzona gave a balanced view of the 2-2 draw between Napoli and Roma at the Stadio Maradona on Sunday evening.
“It was a positive performance. I saw our quality and pride, but unfortunately, we were unable to secure a victory that we would’ve deserved.
“We made mistakes at two key points. We knew how good Roma were from set-pieces and for the last corner I sent on [Leo] Ostigard because he’s such a good header of the ball to try to make us stronger in our aerial game.
“I took off [Hamed] Traore, who I’d brought on during the game, because I felt I needed more physicality in the final minutes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.
“Watching the goal straight back, we should’ve attacked the ball better from the corner. That was a mistake, but now it’s done and we can look ahead.
“It’s the umpteenth episode in a really difficult season. The lads can feel the weight of a very tough year on them and it’s been disappointing in many ways, but we have to keep playing our game and try to finish as well as we can. We gave very little away today against a team that has a very high goal average under [Daniele] De Rossi.”
Do you still believe that Europe is a possibility?
“I come out of this game reassured because we put in a strong performance. It’s true that everything becomes more difficult if you don’t win games, but I’d stress that today we were up against possibly the in-form team in the league and we measured up.”
