Inter head coach Simone Inzaghi is frustrated with circumstances of his team’s defeat at the hands of Lazio this evening, believing that his players lost control of the game mentally.
Speaking to Italian broadcaster DAZN after the match at the Stadio Olimpico the 45-year-old reflected on a loss in which his team were visibly agitated by the end in a match which had no shortage of talking points.
Inter took the lead early in the second half through an Ivan Perisic penalty, and they looked to be managing the threat posed by Maurizio Sarri’s Bianconeri side well enough, but the second half saw his team concede three goals without reply to suffer their first Serie A defeat of the campaign.
Inter have come back to win from three first halves in which they’ve trailed, as well as drawing against Atalanta after a first-half deficit, but against Lazio they showed little of the resiliency that characterized those comeback results and instead it was the Biancocelesti who found a way to turn a difficult situation around.
“For an hour we played the best we have done in the last few games,” Inzaghi stated of the match, “we could have also gotten the second goal. Then we conceded a penalty from a corner kick from Patric’s header.”
“Then came that second goal which was a bit strange and we lost the match,” he went on. “This must not happen, it may happen that the referee does not whistle and that the opponent does not put the ball out. In the third goal Milinkovic-Savic was left alone for the header. Sorry that we didn’t do enough, we go forward with the performance but not the result.”
On the controversy around the Bianconeri’s second goal he stated, “Lautaro was ahead of play, he did not see what was happening. The referee could intervene, but I would not dwell on this. A team like ours, after playing sixty minutes at a good level, must bring home a different result.”
“When you have a quality team like Lazio in front of you,” he stated, “you must not let them get back into the game. For sixty minutes we managed the ball well, but then against teams like this, anything can happen. We faced the consequences.”
He reflected, “The team put in the performance, but at that point you don’t have to take the 1-1, and at 2-1 you have to stay in the game. Because at that point you have to try to bring home the result, we saw what happened with the saves from the goalline.”
Of the display made by Lazio fans thanking him for his years of service to his former club, Inzaghi stated, “Surely it was a very intense 4-5 minutes. I was very pleased to greet my fans, thank them. Then at the kick-off I was a professional giving 100% for my team. The ending was bitter.”
On what his team’s performance missed, Inzaghi named “The second goal, the finishing touch in the last pass in the situations we had. And you must not give Lazio the opportunity to get back into the game with a penalty from a corner.”
“It was a very intense day,” the manager reflected, “the beginning was beautiful but the ending was very bitter. What upset me the most? I saw an Inter that against a well-built Lazio controlled the pitch in the best way. During interval I told the guys to kill the game and not let Lazio return to the match.”
“Now it will be two days of analysis, a team like ours cannot be mentally defeated after such a match,” he said.
On the incident between Joaquin Correa and Luiz Felipe which saw the Lazio defender sent off Inzaghi said, “I don’t know, I haven’t seen anything. They are very good friends, I don’t think anything serious has happened.”
And in a final word on the controversy around Lazio’s second goal Inzaghi stated, “The misfortune meant that we conceded a goal where there was a player on the ground. Lautaro did not see what had happened.”
