Claudio Ranieri admits that Inter ‘crashed hard’ at the weekend and has appealed to his Inter players to respond in midweek.
The Nerazzurri close their Champions League group stage campaign at home to CSKA Moscow, already assured of top spot in the group and progression to the knockout stages.
Claudio Ranieri admits that Inter ‘crashed hard’ at the weekend and has appealed to his Inter players to respond in midweek.
The Nerazzurri close their Champions League group stage campaign at home to CSKA Moscow, already assured of top spot in the group and progression to the knockout stages.
Regardless of this Ranieri is keen that the team return to winning ways after the weekend’s 1-0 defeat at home to Udinese” data-scaytid=”6″>Udinese.
“After Udinese I asked the team to keep fighting,” told Ranieri to Sky Sport Italia. “It would have been a huge jump to win over the Zebrette but unfortunately it was not so.
“We must go forward, remember the courage, the spirit of sacrifice and the quality on the field in Moscow when we were almost out of the Champions League.”
Ranieri reiterated these points when talking to the collected media in his pre-match Champions League Press conference.
“Now we need to answer to ourselves, to the club and to the fans. We need to win for the UEFA rankings.
“We crashed hard on Saturday. I was convinced that we would play a good match and earn a positive result, but that was not the case.
“However, we're not giving up – we've worked hard up until now and we'll work even harder to correct this ship and get it moving back in the right direction. Concerning our physical shape we're ok and doing fine.”
Inter squad to face CSKA Moscow: 12 Luca Castellazzi, 21 Paolo Orlandoni, 91 Raffaele Di Gennaro; 4 Javier Zanetti, 16 Luca Caldirola, 23 Andrea Ranocchia, 25 Walter Samuel, 26 Cristian Chivu, 37 Davide Faraoni, 55 Yuto Nagatomo; 5 Dejan Stankovic, 8 Thiago Motta, 11 Ricky Alvarez, 19 Esteban Cambiasso, 20 Joel Obi, 29 Philippe Coutinho, 48 Lorenzo Crisetig; 7 Giampaolo Pazzini, 22 Diego Milito, 28 Mauro Zarate.