Christian Maggio had a hand in two of Russia’s goals and holds his hands up. “That was a really bad night.”
The Napoli defender seemed sluggish and lacked communication with his club and Italy goalkeeper Morgan De Sanctis in a 3-0 friendly defeat.
Christian Maggio had a hand in two of Russia’s goals and holds his hands up. “That was a really bad night.”
The Napoli defender seemed sluggish and lacked communication with his club and Italy goalkeeper Morgan De Sanctis in a 3-0 friendly defeat.
“I’ll be honest, that was a really bad night. I hope it was the last and that it won’t happen again.
“We knew this was an important friendly, as it’s the only one before the Euros, so we wanted to do well. At times we did positive things, at times less so, but we must now work in training to improve.
“We have to understand where we went wrong and try to improve so we don’t repeat those errors. Obviously nobody is happy after a defeat, but that is when we try to bring the best out of ourselves to avoid doing them again.”
The setback comes just over a week before Italy’s opening Euro 2012 match against Spain on June 10.
“Spain are an incredible team, but we already saw that we beat them in Bari and so anything is possible. Obviously we’re not going to do it playing like we did tonight,” added Maggio.
The lead-up to the tournament has been very difficult, as on Monday the Coverciano training ground and Domenico Criscito’s room was subjected to a dawn raid by police investigating the betting scandal.
“Did we feel the pressure of the scandal? Relatively. We took what happened relatively positively and the important thing is that we are now focused on the Euros.”