Brighton midfielder Pascal Gross says the players are excited facing Roma tonight.

The Seagull meet Roma at the Stadio Olimpico for the first-leg of their Europa League round 16 tie.

Gross said: "We are writing history, the match tomorrow will be Brighton's first in a knockout match, we know it won't be easy but we will face it with humility and dedication.

“I was here a year ago, Gladiator is one of my favorite films, we're here to play it and I can't wait for the game to start."

"Roma is strong, it was strong with Mourinho and it is strong now with De Rossi. We have no experience but we came here to play for it. We know what stadium we are playing in but we also know what we are worth and what we have done in a year and a half, we are proud of it.

"We don't just play for the quarterfinals, we play because we are writing history and we are doing something unthinkable, for everything that Brighton is it is something we feel very strongly about.

"We made the choice to honour all the competitions at maximum, the match against Roma is no more important than Brighton-Nottingham on Sunday. It's clear that we're not used to playing three games a week for such a long time, so much so that we have 10 players injured at the same time, we don't have a squad numerically as broad."