"It's one of those nights that you take with you for the rest of your life."
To say that Stephan El Shaarawy was satisfied with his evening would be something of an understatement.
The Pharaoh, 25 last Friday, had already celebrated his birthday with one wonder goal at the weekend when, just 39 seconds into Roma's massive Champions League clash with Chelsea, he charged on to Edin Dzeko's neat knockdown, beat a dozing Marcos Alonso to the ball and crashed a beautiful first-time drive past Thibaut Courtois that was still rising as it found the top left-hand corner. The 55,000 fans in the Stadio Olimpico exploded with joy, and Roma never looked back.
"It's been an intense week full of excitement. I'm really happy," he added.
The Rome-based Corriere Dello Sport, openly delirious with delight, called Roma's 3-0 thumping of Chelsea a "one man show" and a lauded a "Pharaonic" Roma, a play on the half-Egyptian El Shaarawy's nickname and a word which in Italian is also a figurative way of describing something as lavish, or decadent. In reality, the attacker's display wasn't showy or flashy but cold and incisive.
He followed up on his show-stopping opener 36 minutes later by pouncing on a horrendous Antonio Rudiger error and toeing the ball into the opposite corner just as Chelsea looked be gaining a foothold, and from the first minute until he walked off to rapturous applause a few minutes before the end, the Olimpico long since in party mode after Diego Perotti completed the rout with his own brilliant long range strike, he patrolled the right flank and offered invaluable support to right-back Alessandro Florenzi.
Three goals in as many days has taken El Shaarawy's total to five, already half of last season's all competitions tally, added to which go two assists (four in 2016-17), and he looks to be thriving under coach Eusebio Di Francesco after an up-and-down period with Luciano Spalletti. Italy boss Giampiero Ventura must surely be thinking about using the winger after a truly dreary World Cup qualification campaign that has lacked the pace and clinical finishing that El Shaarawy put on show on Tuesday.
"In order to become the player he really is, he needs consistency," said Di Francesco after the match.
"Before he would often like to hug the line, but today he scored two goals cutting inside to look for that pass that I really like (a ball forward from the opposite wing). That desire to attack the space means that he's making the difference. But it's also the defensive side of the game that has made him a player."
That assessment could be applied to the whole team. Roma's win over Chelsea brought their ninth clean sheet in 14 matches and their fourth in as many games, and what's more remarkable about this new-found defensive solidity -- it took them until halfway through last season to rack up as many clean sheets, during which time they conceded 29 goals compared to this season's five -- is that they've done it after having sold Rudiger to Chelsea and having suffered cruciate ligament layoffs to full-backs Rick Karsdorp and Emerson Palmieri.
They've also had to deal with a multitude of other muscle injuries, the most important of which kept starting centre-back Kostas Manolas out of both clashes against the Blues and the three Serie A fixtures in between. Federico Fazio has expertly stepped into that gap and shimmied past criticism that a back four, and Di Francesco's high-press system, wasn't right for him. How Chelsea fans must have wondered what happened to the player who was bullied so badly by Didier Drogba while haplessly flailing around at Tottenham.
Di Francesco's team have been slowly developing after an uninspiring opening few weeks both in the league and in Europe, but Tuesday night was his side's breakout performance, the first time they've truly married their defensive solidity and attacking prowess against top opposition. Previous big matches at the Olimpico have ended in disappointment, with defeats to Inter Milan and Napoli (the latter just about deserved, the former much less so) and an extremely fortunate goalless draw with Atletico Madrid leaving some doubts as to the true potential of this team, despite decent results elsewhere.
Now, top of Group C and a shoo-in for the knockout stages thanks to the five-point gap between them and third-placed Atletico Madrid, people are starting to take notice of the Giallorossi, who have consistently arrived in the upper reaches of Serie A since the American consortium took over the club in 2011, but have done nothing of note on the continent if not take beatings from Europe's finest. If they finish top of this group, from which basically no-one gave them a hope of even qualifying, they can consider themselves contenders for the latter stages of the competition. Teams are going to find them tough to break down and as Chelsea themselves proved en route to winning it in 2012, that can take you very far.
Florenzi summed up the mood in his postmatch interview with Mediaset. The right-back, a born-and-bred Roman and Romanista, was buzzing after snuffing out Eden Hazard and Marcos Alonso, and you could see the smirk on his face as he insisted that everyone at the club deserved the credit for Tuesday night's phenomenal result.