Ivan Juric explains his changes to the Roma side for their Europa League opener against Athletic Club, including how they aim to ‘hurt’ the Spanish outfit.
It kicks off at the Stadio Olimpico at 20.00 UK time (19.00 GMT).
You can follow all the build-up and action as it happens on the LIVEBLOG.
The Europa League has also changed format this season, so each team will take on eight different opponents and all the results go into one big league table.
It has been a chaotic time for the Giallorossi, who fired coach Daniele De Rossi just over a week ago and brought in Juric, who made his debut in a 3-0 Serie A win over Udinese.
He has made three changes from that side, bringing in Mario Hermoso for his first start, with Manu Koné and Tommaso Baldanzi, but Lorenzo Pellegrini, Enzo Le Fée and Alexis Saelemaekers are injured.
“Koné is young and has a lot of capability, he hasn’t played this type of football before, but I saw a lot more concentration and understanding over the last couple of days. We’ll see how it goes, there is work to be done, but he has great potential,” Juric told Sky Sport Italia.
Juric makes Roma changes for Athletic Club
There were doubts as to whether Paulo Dybala would start or be rested, but La Joya is in the XI behind Artem Dovbyk.
“I hope he is ready, he had a great game for 80 minutes and seemed to recover well over the last four days.”
Nico Williams is carrying a knock and only on the bench, but his brother Inaki Williams starts for Athletic Bilbao and there is no secret around the Basque side’s greatest strength.
“It’s not just Nico, they have a lot of pace all over the team and focus on counter-attacks. We worked in training to prepare for those concepts and hopefully will prevent the counter-attacks from getting started,” added Juric.
“We have to play good football. Athletic have been synchronised well in defence for many years, but I think we can hurt them with two players behind the centre-forward, with the wing-backs, it can be done.”
The former Torino coach was rushed to take the job and therefore hasn’t had time to find a house in Rome, so has been living and working 24 hours a day at the Trigoria training ground.
“There is a lot of work to be done, we are trying to understand everything that we can improve and in this period there’s a lot to focus on.”
