Spalletti: ‘Difficult to accept’

Luciano Spalletti concedes Inter’s 3-2 defeat to Juventus will “take more than one sleepless night to shake off. It shouldn’t have ended like this.”

The Nerazzurri were down to 10 men for over 70 minutes, as Matias Vecino received a controversial red card, while Miralem Pjanic was fortunate not to see a second yellow.

Luciano Spalletti concedes Inter’s 3-2 defeat to Juventus will “take more than one sleepless night to shake off. It shouldn’t have ended like this.”

The Nerazzurri were down to 10 men for over 70 minutes, as Matias Vecino received a controversial red card, while Miralem Pjanic was fortunate not to see a second yellow.

“It’s difficult for me to evaluate… I don’t think there was a completely balanced treatment of situations,” Spalletti told Mediaset Premium of referee Daniele Orsato’s performance.

“We above all lost it because we used up a lot of energy by playing down to 10 men. At the end, that equaliser for 2-2 was so chaotic and unlucky. The team deserved a more fortunate outcome, quite frankly.”

Mauro Icardi came off for Davide Santon and was spotted in tears at the final whistle.

“There were many players who were exhausted. The problem was we need more work to defend and control the ball, as we were starting deep and had to maintain a certain structure on set plays, as Juve are very tall. With Santon, I was able to bolster that area.

“The easiest thing is to tell them the truth. Clearly, we need to shake off the bitterness of this defeat, because the team didn’t deserve it. The question then is why does this have to be forced upon us? That’s the difference.

“It’s difficult to make them accept it, because the problem is that you must give the players the credit they deserve. This is the game that means a lot for us, for the fans, for everyone. It’ll take more than one sleepless night to shake that off.

“There are some things we don’t understand… it should not have ended like this. It’s upsetting, because the players are not some emotionless robots who only do this for work. There’s no credit card here, but their hard work and desire to give the fans joy.”