Carlo Ancelotti calls on his Napoli players to learn from the defeat to Juventus, both the negatives and positives, ahead of the Liverpool game.
The Partenopei were beaten 3-1 in Turin on Saturday evening, and face another tough test at the San Paolo tomorrow night.
“The advantage we had early on [against Juve] was down to our high pressing,” Ancelotti explained in his pre-match Press conference.
Carlo Ancelotti calls on his Napoli players to learn from the defeat to Juventus, both the negatives and positives, ahead of the Liverpool game.
The Partenopei were beaten 3-1 in Turin on Saturday evening, and face another tough test at the San Paolo tomorrow night.
“The advantage we had early on [against Juve] was down to our high pressing,” Ancelotti explained in his pre-match Press conference.
“Then we got intimidated, we dropped deeper and we gave them a way out. That didn’t allow us to express the qualities we showed when we went down to 10 men.
“Everything seemed lost so we relaxed mentally and our quality shone through. The team will improve from that point of view by playing these kind of games.
“Tomorrow we have to restart from that first half hour. The psychological aspect is important, we’re playing at home and we know the boost our fans can give us.
“We’re facing a team that will play at high intensity but we want to do the same thing, so it’ll come down to whether we can impose our strategy.
“It won’t be easy, but that’s the key. We’re very confident, we know what we need to do and we’ll do it.
“We need to play with balance, we can’t gamble without being balanced. We need to study everything from Turin, from the difficulties we had to the ability we showed to impose ourselves against a very strong team.
“After that match I wasn’t calm, then I flicked the switch and focused on this game. Everything surrounding that game was taken over by negative things, so now we move on to positive things.
“There will be an extraordinary atmosphere tomorrow night and these are the games you want to experience. We come into this game with a carefree spirit.”
Ancelotti was asked who will play tomorrow, but unsurprisingly was coy in his answer.
“The choices are linked to physical condition. If all the players who played Saturday are physically ready, they’ll be able to play.
“We’ll need to play a high intensity match and we’re ready for that, we proved it by playing with 10 men against Juventus.
“We can cause them [Liverpool] problems but we’ll need to manage the periods where they’re on top and be attentive when they try to counter-attack.”