Inter manager Antonio Conte has sang the praises of attacking midfielder Christian Eriksen following his performance in Inter’s Champions League group stage opener at home to Borussia Monchengladbach.
Inter started their 2020/21 Champions League group stage campaign with a draw although on the balance of play the Nerazzurri side probably should have been celebrating a victory.
“Like the whole team, Eriksen had a good game. We asked him to be more decisive on the ball, and I think he did well, as did all the lads,” he began an interview with Italian broadcaster Sky Sport Italia following the match.
“We have to concentrate on doing our best on the pitch. That’s all we have to do. It wasn’t easy today to receive the news at 5pm that Hakimi was positive.
“Up until this morning, he was training with us, he was meant to start, so we’d prepared all the tactical situations.
“I told the lads to face every situation with heads held high. It wasn’t easy on a psychological level, but the lads showed they are good men as well as good players.”
He was then asked if a comparison can be made to last year’s Champions League group stage opener against Slavia Prague, which was very similar to this match in that Inter rescued a draw very late on.
“This match cannot be compared to the one with Slavia Prague. Last year we didn’t play well, today we did against a team with great potential. I don’t remember Samir making any saves, but we created many opportunities to win.
“I have nothing that I can scold the boys for. Of course we can improve, in some situations we made some mistakes.”
The former Italian national team boss then addressed the lack of viable options available to him off of the substitutes bench in the match.
“I think we could do very little with the bench today. Alessandro Bastoni had two training sessions after COVID, Marcelo Brozovic had a muscular problem and Stefano Sensi wasn’t available. Radja Nainggolan had a training session yesterday for the first time.”
In conclusion Conte was asked about the condition of attacker Alexis Sanchez who had to be substituted at half time due to an injury.
“Sanchez needs to be evaluated by the medical staff. Sometimes you need to interpret with Alexis and figure out what’s going on, but we’ll see tomorrow what the situation is.”
