After tonights heavy defeat against Napoli, Andrea Stramaccioni was interviewed by Sky: “The boys in the defense gave everything. Ranocchia, who yesterday was unable to even put on his sweatpants, didn’t perform to the best of his ability. We tried to play with Chivu but he was very affected by his foot injury. I want to thank them both. In other circumstances we wouldn’t have risked to play with them. Today, only Andrea was in a lot of pain, he grit his teeth, then I took him off because on wednesday night we have to play a very delicate match.”
“Tonight we pay our compliments to Napoli, but we were faced with a fantastic Cavani. Up until their 3-1 goal we played on par with them. Directly after we scored, they got their penalty, asw soon as we came onto the pitch we conceded our first goal. After the break we started better than Napoli. Given the situation we find ourselves in we still managed to play our own game against a team who quite deservedly sits in second place. The penalty? I was very angry because when we were awarded our penalty their player wasn’t booked, which happened with Jonathan. The ball went to Pandev and the Zuniga falls down, for me it’s not a penalty. We asked for Zuniga’s yellow card because the rules clearly state that when a penalty is awarded you have to at least give a yellow card whilst also considering a red card. These are things that happen which make me angry but that in no way affect the final result. I was given the impression that the referee forgot to book him. Even the fourth official told me to wait for the card to be shown.”
“We analyze ourselves in a correct way. When during a season you suffer from 3 achilles tendons and 2 serious cruciate knee ligaments, then theese are things that don’t allow you to judge the work you undertake on the pitch. You have to talk about who is available and who can do well. As long as we were healthy we played well. This is the situation we find ourselves in and when we lost Rocchi because of injury we suffered again.”
A short moment afterwards Stramaccioni was interviewed by Premium Calcio and he was asked when Cassano is ready for action again: “First we have to get Rocchi back, then we have Cassano who is very important but has been out for a month and therefore will start on the bench as we don’t want to risk losing him again. Even Chivu and Ranocchia started the match in anything but in a good physical condition, but the boys showed that they are prepared to give everything for Inter.”
Finally the young Rome-born tactician was asked if he dreams about the possible arrival of Fabregas or someone from Real Madrid: “The President and the directors are all working on this particular issue. Nobody is happy over the way in which we are concluding this season but we have to pick ourselves up by the neck and build a better Inter. This is the first year of a new cycle and up until all the injuries came we had a good base to stand on. We are all very sad over the outcome but we’re doing our best to perform to our best towards the end of the season. Even other cycle’s have started poorly, I don’t want to make any other promises to our fans other than that we’re giving 100%. The most important thing is to continue on our path. There are reasons as to why the season has ended the way it has but that doesn’t mean that we should go back and start from scratch. I belive in this, even Moratti does, but we shouldn’t change our path.”
