ROME (Reuters) - AS Roma coach Paulo Fonseca has never seen an injury crisis like the one which has engulfed his side and it makes it impossible to build a team, he said on Wednesday.
Roma's problems increased when Davide Santon was reported to have flu, adding to the eight players already sidelined -- Amadou Diawara, Edin Dzeko, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Lorenzo Pellegrini, Cengiz Under, Davide Zappacosta, Bryan Cristante and Nikola Kalinic.
"It is a new situation which has never happened to me in the past," said Fonseca, who joined Roma this season and was previously in charge of Ukrainian champions Shakhtar Donetsk. "At Shakhtar, we had four injuries in the whole of last season."
"With all these injuries, it's impossible for the team to grow and progress the way we want," added the Portuguese, whose side are sixth in Serie A and host Borussia Moenchengladbach in the Europa League on Thursday.
"We cannot maintain stability... these are all important players who are missing. This is not an excuse, it's just the way things are."
(Writing by Brian Homewood; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
