Pioli to SKY: “Icardi excellent, sets an example for everyone. Banega and Kondogbia great, but I already knew that.”

Stefano Pioli spoke to SKY after the game against Lazio, this was his comments: “There has to be a lot of players in the offensive phase if we want to be unpredictable, we failed to do that in the first half. We’re in a phase of growing when it comes to play with spirit. Also tonight we made some errors, but we play with motivation and conviction, and that’s what’s important. It was a tough opponent and we had to perform well, but I think we deserved to win and we played well. I didn’t know Icardi as a person before, now I know a good lad, always available, with a lot of motivation who sets a good example for everyone. On the pitch he’s a world class player, inside the area he’s fantastic. He sacrifices himself and helps out the trequartista. I can only be satisifed of his performance and his approach. We have to be fast in moving the ball forward, if we put our players between the lines the defenders have to give some space to our wingers. In the second half, with D’Ambrosio and Perisic, we made their full-backs work hard. The speed of the ball and to make the right choices are the things we have to work more on in order to get quality passes to our players. This team has technical, physical and moral skills, it’s a team that works hard and that wants to prove that our position in the standings is not the right one. We want to move to the top but there is still some work to be done. We have a lot of room for improvement. Banega and Kondogbia? They did great, but honestly, I have seen their motivation for helping the team. They are players of quality, they just needed som confidence and now they understand that they can be part of this team.”

Source: SKY