The Sporting Director of FC Lugano has praised his side for their performance against Inter in a pre-season friendly played on Saturday night, according to a report in the Swiss broadcast media.

Speaking after the game to the Swiss TV channel RSI, Sporting Director Marco Padalino expressed pride in how his team matched up to Inter and gave them an extremely close-run game.

“They gave very good answers to the coach, we are close to the start of the championship and Sunday will be a battle.”

Inter fell two goals behind after just 35 minutes against FC Lugano but Danilo D’Ambrosio pulled one back before halftime.

Young Uruguayan striker Martin Satriano then scored the equaliser to cap off his fine performance and force the game to penalties. Inter then won that shoot-out with Andrea Ranocchia scoring the decisive penalty.

FC Lugano start their competitive season next Sunday so they were much further along in their physical preparations than Inter. Martin Padalino clearly took this into account when assessing the performance of his team on Saturday.

“Today we saw a good team on the pitch against Inter, which even if he had half a team out and has only recently started pre-season.”