Luciano Spalletti reveals what sparked the tense clashes at the final whistle of Napoli’s 3-2 Europa League defeat to Spartak Moscow. ‘He mocked us for the entire second half.’
It was an ugly game at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, with the Partenopei taking the lead within 11 seconds, then Mario Rui’s red card changed everything before the half-hour mark.
Europa League | Napoli 2-3 Spartak Moscow: Partenopei see red
Spartak Moscow eventually won 3-2 in a chaotic encounter, leaving Napoli with one point from two Europa League games.
There was tension after the final whistle too, Spalletti booked for having words with members of the Spartak staff.
“Nothing happened…” shrugged Spalletti on Sky Sport Italia.
“I simply went to salute one of the Spartak collaborators, because he mocked us for the entire second half. I just wanted to shake his hand.
“When you sit too deep, it becomes difficult to get back out, and we struggled. We moved to 5-3-1 and were suffering less, but we allowed one of their strikers to break and that’s when they made it 2-1.
“After Spartak also had a man sent off, we genuinely believed we could get it back on level terms, but instead we were too frantic. If we had remained calm, we would’ve equalised. Instead, they got a third goal.
“We can improve some things, and I expected to do better in the final 15 minutes, but we weren’t organised enough.”
This is the first Napoli defeat of the season after a 2-2 draw away to Leicester City and their six wins out of six in Serie A.
“I’ve lost many times, so it’s not exactly new!” shrugged the coach. “If we had scored a second goal in the first half, we would’ve won.
“We didn’t do well after going down to 10 men. It’s a game we can lose, there were some decisive incidents. If not for those four or five cynical fouls to stop our counter-attacks, we could’ve really hurt them, but we showed a lack of experience.”
Napoli tried all summer to get a left-back, but eventually settled for Juan Jesus as a makeshift option, so how will they work now without Mario Rui?
“We have Faouzi Ghoulam, who we hope will recover soon.”
https://t.co/Me7O9PidEJ Spalletti: “Mi aspettavo di fare meglio, ero convinto si potesse riprendere! Abbiamo fatto un po’ di confusione, non disastri. Rosso a Mario Rui giusto, uno dei loro ci ha preso in giro tutto il secondo tempo”
— CalcioNapoli24.it (@CalcioNapoli24) September 30, 2021