Angry Spalletti slams Roma players´ attitude

Roma coach Luciano Spalletti was unimpressed with his players’ mentality after they fell to a 3-1 defeat at Torino.

Iago Falque, the winger on loan from Roma, did the damage against his parent club by scoring a decisive second-half double.

His goals came either side of Francesco Totti’s 250th Serie A strike, with Spalletti’s team never able to get back on level terms following Andrea Belotti’s early header.

Roma have now lost two of their last three Serie A matches to leave them five points behind early leaders Juventus and Spalletti is fed up of seeing his side expect to simply turn up and win.

He told Sky Italia: “For a long time this team has shown too many highs and lows, both under myself and other coaches. 

“When they are able to feed off the enthusiasm from our fans, they are able to produce more than they usually can. 

“On the other hand, as soon as they encounter difficulties, the heads drop and confusion sets in because they mistakenly think that the potential quality of the players is enough to pull something out of the bag, without rolling up their sleeves and searching for more effort and hard work.

“Consequently, this is when the opponents demonstrate precisely these qualities and therefore what Roma have to offer is not enough.

“A disconnect emerges between the technical aspect and what happens on the pitch. There’s always this presumption that things will happen by themselves purely because of the prestige of the club, the quality in the squad and the importance of the shirt. 

“We were probably missing a bit of determination. We messed up a few chances at the beginning and had these chances been better exploited, we definitely could have directed the match in a different direction.

“When we let them in for their first chance of the game, Torino scored.”

Spalletti knows Roma cannot continue to produce such performances, as issues over effort will always be blamed on the coach.

He added: “Unfortunately, our history suggests that we don’t always maintain the level of hard work and effort needed for 90 minutes, put in the hard yards or try to help our team-mates. We have peaks and troughs and we definitely have to address this during the week.

“If this tendency exists, the coach is the first to take the blame because he needs to keep up a more measured attitude in the squad, without any of these jolts.”