Inter head coach Simone Inzaghi feels that his team were hard done by in this evening’s loss to AC Milan in the derby.
Speaking to Italian broadcaster DAZN after the match, the coach reflected on his side’s second Serie A loss of the campaign and specifically focused on what he felt was a foul on Alexis Sanchez in the buildup to the Rossoneri’s equalizing goal.
Inter went ahead in the first half through a well-taken Ivan Perisic goal from a corner, and headed into the second half with the game looking under control.
However, during the second half the Rossoneri ratcheted up the pressure and a brace from Olivier Giroud was enough to give them a victory and reduce the deficit on Inter at the top of the table to a point, albeit with Inter having a game in hand.
Inzaghi regrets that his team let first-half lead slip to drop all three points as they had earlier in the campaign against Lazio, though he also felt that the Rossoneri’s first goal should not have stood.
“I don’t want to see it again,” he said of the challenge by Giroud on Alexis Sanchez in the leadup to Milan’s first goal. “It was a foul, if you think it was a fair challenge that’s fine.”
“But it is what it is,” he reflected, “we have to be better. Even in the first half there were episodes. But as I said before, if we had been at 2-0 or 3-0 the referee would not have whistled in the same way.”
On his team failing to get anything from a match where they appeared in control for long spells, Inzaghi said that “This is how football is. We can dominate for much of the time, but we didn’t manage to score the second goal.”
“Their equalizing goal made us nervous, we lost our composure,” he admitted.
“But we have to see it as being like it was against Lazio, I watched a match that was one-way traffic for seventy minutes,” he went on.
“We conceded that unfortunate goal, the guys got nervous,” he continued. “I think there was probably a clear foul on Sanchez, that’s a regret. I thought it was a one-way derby unlike the first one which had been very open.”
He reflected that the result showed “That we lost a bit of clarity, there were counterattacks from one side to the other, it was a game made up of key moments and we didn’t deal with them well.”
“It’s a defeat that stings,” he said, “but strong teams must move on and analyze it, why it happened, so that it doesn’t happen again.”
On the mood in the locker room after the final whistle, Inzaghi said that “It’s normal for there to be disappointment. We all know how important the derby is.”
“We lost it undeservedly but that’s football and we must do well to analyze the match calmly and figure out what we were missing because, objectively, until their first goal we had conceded practically nothing.”
“But that’s how football is,” he reiterated, “it’s a hard lesson that we need to be more clinical and kill games off, because we didn’t have to be just a goal up when the seventieth minute came around.”
“The first thought is that we should have managed it the same way that we had the first 65-70 minutes,” he went on, “but we lost some clarity and stopped playing our game.”
“We allowed it to become a game of back-and-forth counters, and didn’t control possession,” he added. “We should have done better to kill it off, I’ll have to see watch it back but it seemed like we stopped controlling possession after seventy minutes.”
Of the performances from the players he brought off, the coach said that “I think Lautaro was very good, he gave everything he had. Perisic asked to come off because he felt some tightness in his calf.”
“There was also the substitution of Calhanoglu with eighteen minutes to go,” he continued, “but Hakan had exerted a lot.”
“I don’t think we lost because of the changes, I think we lost because we didn’t score a second goal,” he went on, also reiterating that “Sanchez was also barged to the ground on their first goal, but I won’t focus on that.”
On the substitutions in the second half, Inzaghi once again made clear that “They were necessary, we had three players who had come back South America.”
“I have to be rational,” he continued, “and I saw my team dominate Milan for seventy minutes and in that respect I’m happy, but then I see the result and it stings because this was a great opportunity for us.”
“We didn’t get the result we deserved based on what we showed on the pitch,” he opined, “but as with the loss to Lazio we have to react.”
And on the fact that the Nerazzurri’s schedule isn’t getting any easier, Inzaghi said that “We would have liked to head into our next games with a different result from tonight’s match but that’s football.”
“This is the schedule that we’ve been given, and as with the first half of the season where we had difficult sequences of matches, we will move forward,” he emphasized in closing.
