Inter head coach Simone Inzaghi feels that his players did well to navigate a tricky situation and avoid the pitfall of dropping points in a match where many took victory for granted against Viktoria Plzen.
Speaking to InterTV, the coach hailed the maturity shown by his players to see out the result they needed to secure their place in the Champions League round of sixteen.
On paper, beating Plzen certainly wasn’t as difficult as beating Barcelona or Bayern Munich.
However, the feeling that all the hard work was already done with four points against Barcelona could have been a trap for the Nerazzurri.
Inter didn’t approach the match against Plzen with complacency, however.
Far from it, the team played an aggressive match to try and carve out as many chances as they could to win whilst also remaining concentrated in defense.
Inzaghi praised his team for playing a “Serious and organized match, they knew what we were playing for and we must congratulate them because we were in an incredible group with two very strong teams.”
“We’ve reached our first goal of the season, and we have to take a lot of self-belief from this heading into the next matches.”
“Today it’s only right that we enjoy such a wonderful evening in front of our fans, but already from tomorrow we’ll be thinking about Saturday,” the coach added.
Inzaghi noted that “It was a match in which we had everything to lose because it was taken for granted that we’d win, but we know that we have to give everything in all Champions League matches, and once again I have to applaud the guy.”
Of the defensive performance by his team, Inzaghi said that “We did well to interpret all the moments within the match correctly, and we attacked and defended as a team.”
The coach noted that return of Romely Lukaku matters “A lot because he’s a great player and a great guy who we’ve missed out on a lot.”
“I’m happy for him and for Gagliardini who’s also been out,” he continued, “now we’re waiting for Brozo, who’s very close to coming back.”
“For a coach it’s good to have all the players available, I have to make a lot of choices in terms of selection because we have so many matches coming and I have to get the best out of everyone in the long term,” he added.
