Sula gara cabbage Benfica
“We know the importance of the match, it’s a quarter-final of the Champions League, we’ve had a great journey, very difficult. And that’s why tomorrow we will have to try to play a great game: we find a team that is unbeaten in the Champions League, they have scored 28 goals so far, with Bruges they have scored 7 goals and shot 40 times on goal. But we are Inter, we have prepared well: in the last three games the team has had three good matches in my opinion, clearly not followed by the result. But if we analyze them we have shot 40 times on goal: we have to continue like this, we know that there are moments in which you touch them once and you score. Now we have difficulty scoring, which never happened last year and until January. Now we have to work, analyse, work, believe it and tomorrow we know it won’t be easy against a strong, quality opponent, but we know that together – and I think this is the word to use in the next two months – we can get every satisfaction. The goal was to arrive in April in all competitions: we are late in the league, but we have the chance to come back.”
South Benfica
“Benfica are an excellent team, like Porto, they are dominating their league. It will be a match where there will be moments to be offensive and others to be defensive: Benfica comes to pick you up, not always, but you’ll have to play a game of head and heart, without thinking about the episode. It’s a great team. He is making an excellent journey in the Champions League, the same in the league. He has quality, he has technical players, they occupy spaces very well, in possession and non-possession. It’s a team that runs a lot, which is doing very well, which has lost two games since the beginning of the year, the last one on Friday against Porto. And we will have to be good at doing our race”.
On criticism
“Last year in Salerno we won 5-0 and perhaps we didn’t play as well as on Friday. Only that in the first half we had four shots on goal and three goals, this time we had more than twenty and we scored one. We know where we went wrong, there are always criticisms“.
On the difference between the championship and the Champions League
“Seeing the last week and the three games we’ve played, I think that more I would just like the result. In Turin, in my opinion, we deserved to win, we certainly have to do more, we are not facilitated by the calendar, but I always see a crazy commitment from the boys. I’m happy with what the guys are doing, we’re clearly not satisfied: right now we would have deserved more, beyond the episodes and we should do more”.
On Skriniar and Calhanoglu
“They’re two very important players, clearly there’s also some absence in Benfica. I would have liked to play it with the two full teams: both are taking a long time to return, Calhanoglu I hope I can already have him with Monza. For Skriniar maybe it will take a little more“.