Vincenzo Italiano has lamented Fiorentina’s performance in their 4-0 loss at home to Inter on Sunday evening, highlighting that team’s will struggle against the division’s top sides if they are not at 100%.
Fiorentina were upended by a first half strike from Inter’s summer signing Marcus Thuram, before goals after the interval from Lautaro Martinez and Hakan Calhanoglu rounded off a long day at the office for La Viola.
Still, Italiano believed that Fiorentina were in the game until they conceded, but the team’s response was not what the coach was looking for.
“I think we were in the game until their goal, then failed to do anything that put them in any sort of difficulty,” he told DAZN shortly after full-time. “I tried to give confidence to those who weren’t 100%,” he continued.
Fiorentina had been in action on Thursday night, defeating Rapid Vienna 2-0 in the second leg of the Conference League play-off round. The high from that night was ultimately not enough to see the team through against Inter, however,
Italiano expanded: “I was hoping that the mental aspect of Thursday could make up for the tiredness. We have not responded to the first challenge. That’s not who we are.
“It will make us react, but now we need to put it to one side. We expected the game to go differently and we came out of it with 50 minutes of bad play. When we are at 100%, we will show more. We take responsibility, we will work hard so that we never see a Viola performance like this again.
Still, Italiano insisted that there is no room for excuses and that the team will now work hard to make up for Sunday’s shortcomings.
“The team will no longer hear me say that we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. We knew how to deal with it. Now we will try to improve, especially in our choices.
“In Serie A, if you’re not 100% against the top teams, you struggle. There are no hierarchies, it depends on how you play on the day and how you recover.”
Fiorentina will next take to the field after the international break, when Atalanta visit the Stadio Artemio Franchi on Sunday, September 17.