Gabriele Cioffi took the chance to look back at the last game against Hellas Verona at the start of his pre-match press conference for the Serie A showdown with Inter before moving on to the task at hand at San Siro.
“We didn’t analyse that game for two days to let our wounds heal and then focused on taking care of the small details. I’ve got over the draw without underestimating what happened. It’s been an intense week. The players have trained with great fervour.”
The boss mentioned Isaac Success, who had to be withdrawn five minutes into the draw with Verona: “He’ll be assessed in training in a few hours. It’s important to have competition for places in every position. When you have that, it means everyone is ready,” in a nod to Lorenzo Lucca, who scored two fine goals last time out.
“I’ve shown that sending the youngsters out there doesn’t scare me. I make instinctive decisions. Lorenzo has shown extraordinary quality. He has innate talent. He still has a lot to learn, but he went on with the right attitude and gave an immediate answer, which wasn’t easy. He hasn’t got anything wrong since the first minute he was called upon. He also did well against Monza and Milan when he came on. It was a test as a number nine against Verona and he showed what he can do. He needs to confirm the potential that he has as a forward. All I can do is watch on and based on that, I decide who plays.”
The injury to Jaka Bijol is not tempting the coach to change things up too much. “I don’t intend to alter the system. I’m not changing 30 years of history. Adam Masina is getting back into the rhythm after a long layoff. He’s a really positive guy who’s training extremely well. He was behind physically, but he’s been going hard in the last two weeks. He could play on the left or centrally in our rearguard, so there’s more competition.”
It is a similar story for Sandi Lovric, as the coach explained. “He’s always been so good with me. He’s never accepted the situation. It’s down to him to show me and the team whenever he gets the call that he wants a starting berth. He’s doing just that. He needs to keep it up until he gets his chance.
“As for Lazar Samardzic, every game has to be important, not just this one. I’m convinced he’ll turn in a great performance.”
The boss said he is not worried about Roberto Pereyra’s fitness. “He didn’t train last week, but he came up to me and asked to play, so I said yes. He’s a player that shifts the balance and I didn’t want to leave him out, but anyone else who played in his place would’ve done just as well.”
Cioffi finished off by analysing the upcoming clash with the Nerazzurri: “I’m expecting a really tough game. I’m convinced that even if you prepare perfectly for Inter, they have players that can find imperfection in perfection. All it takes is one misplaced pass, so we’ll need to work really hard as a team to try to take the chances that they may afford us. That doesn’t mean that we go there knowing we’ll get them, but with the healthy fear that we want to take them as they could see us return to Udine with points in the bag."