Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Rodgers tells Foxes to take heart despite defeat
BRENDAN Rodgers urged Leicester to harness their pain after the Foxes’ Europa Conference League agony.
Tammy Abraham’s header gave Roma a 1-0 win and a 2-1 aggregate victory to set up a final with Feyenoord in Tirana later this month.
The Foxes struggled all night at the Stadio Olimpico in a limp performance where they failed to do themselves justice in their first
European semi-final. Defeat means European football is highly unlikely next season, with Leicester 11th in the Premier League and 10 points off the top seven, but manager Rodgers wants to build again.
He said: “It’s a young team and learning all the time, this is a level a lot of them have never been to. It’s only natural but the guys will learn and it’s another experience. It’s a tough one when you lose but it’s important to learn from it.
“It’s been a great journey for us. The players will learn and gain a lot of experience from it. Nights like tonight will stay with them and give them that motivation going forward.
“The players will feel the experiences of the last couple of years. We can regroup in the summer, feelings of tonight will provide a great motivation and when you have more coaching time it gives you a chance to push on.”
Rodgers, though, bemoaned Leicester’s weakness at set-pieces which has dogged them all season.
“Our Achilles heel all season has been set-pieces and it has undone us again in what was a tight game,” he said.
“It’s clearly physicality. We are a team who have done everything to change the momentum of the set-pieces. We’ve gone man-toman and zonal but it doesn’t work consistently enough.”