Lazio vs Atalanta, Inzaghi: “The objectives change”

Simone Inzaghi, Source: Gianluca Di Marzio

After the defeat against Atalanta, Simone Inzaghi spoke at a press conference to comment on the performance of his players. Here are the questions and his answers:

“Your team had a great start. Then something changed. And in the end the dreams of the Champions League were blurred…”

“We got off to a good start, we could have handled a few restarts better. Then there was the opportunity with Immobile, their goalkeeper was good. I remember Ilicic’s shot to the side. Then the opportunity of Freuler. First half was right, then the second half was better for them. We were back on track, but there was an individual error that changed the result. In the last twenty minutes there was no reaction from the team.”

“Substitution of Caicedo, why?”

“I wanted to keep the same set-up. Caicedo and Immobile were satisfying me, I wanted to put Correa, Caicedo had a yellow. I opted for him, but he was doing very well with Immobile. Of the two, I chose Caicedo.”

“Worried about the final?”

“They are a tough opponent, hard to deal with. We’ll play on a level playing field, the details make the difference, surely they were better at this today. But it will be an open game.”

“Lazio were close to the Champions League for fifteen minutes last year. They’re probably not going this year. How are the opponents?”

“We made a few mistakes, then teams like Atalanta and Milan played better than us. We lost ground with teams we had to beat. Our goal is for our place in Europe to come from the Coppa Italia.”

Wallace, why did you choose him? And why did the team decline in the second half?”

“Maybe you already prepared this question last week. But Wallace had played very well on Sunday in Genoa, he worked well during the week. Sixty good minutes, then he made mistakes. But he wasn’t the only one. I’ll always defend him, as I defend all my players. If he trains well he deserves to play like the others. We didn’t play well in the second half, but then we got back on the pitch. After 2-1 we had to do more, not be disjointed.”

“More goals in the second half, how come?”

“It’s easy to talk afterwards. In the second half we get more goals. We have to eliminate certain mistakes if we want to go to Europe.”

“It’s not the first time that Atalanta has scored on individual mistakes…”

“They make you make mistakes, but I think we should have made better use of the opportunities and not made technical errors. Milinkovic -Savic and Lulic might have helped us today. We had a good match, which was spoiled by the goals.”

Tags Atalanta Champions League Coppa Italia Lazio Serie A Simone Inzaghi