“Shameful.”
Roy Keane wasn’t impressed with Roma’s defensive efforts against Liverpool on Tuesday night. The Serie A side suffered a 5-2 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield and were trailing by five goals at one point.
Jurgen Klopp’s side produced an excellent performance, particularly their three forwards – Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane – and ruthlessly exposed the opposition’s weaknesses. However, the Italians played right into Liverpool’s hands.
They deployed a back-three with wing-backs and were torn asunder by Liverpool’s three forwards. Klopp’s team just continued to play long passes into wide areas, and Roma’s rather slow central defenders were run ragged.
Spot on https://t.co/ABdbTeT0QP
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 26, 2018
Rio Ferdinand pinned the blame for the team’s somewhat reckless tactics on their manager, Eusebio Di Francesco. But his former teammates has directed his criticism towards the players. Keane has said that if he had played as poorly as the defenders did, he would consider retirement.
“The Roma players gave up,” the former Manchester United captain said on ITV’s Champions League highlights show.
“After about an hour they downed tools. If I played like some of their defenders did in that game last night, I would consider retiring from football. I really would. Shameful. The fact is, they scored two late goals that obviously covered the cracks a little bit. Again, we can slag Roma off but you still need to take advantage of that and Liverpool did and punished them, and rightly so.”
You can watch Keane speak about the Liverpool match here:
Keane also spoke about who Liverpool would prefer to face in the final. Bayern Munich trail Real Madrid 2-1 after Wednesday night’s semi-final.
Clips via ITV Football.
