Sandro Tonali was bitterly disappointed after Milan’s Coppa Italia loss to Torino, suggesting that things would’ve been different without the sending off.
The Rossoneri mostly dominated proceedings at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, seeing more of the ball and taking far more shots than their travelling opponents. In the 69th minute, Koffi Djidji was shown a second yellow card after a poor tackle on Junior Messias, putting his Torino down to 10 men.
The Granata held firm and snatched a winner in the 114th minute of the match through Michel Ndary Adopo, sending them through to the quarter-finals and knocking out Milan.
Speaking to Sportmediaset after the defeat, Tonali expressed his disappointment and analysed where things went wrong.
“We’re disappointed, but we’re lucky to have three other competitions and in three days we play again. Now we have to analyse what went wrong in this match, which was decided by a moment while we were all ahead.
“Now let’s put a point on it and get off to a great start. If there hadn’t been the sending off it would’ve been a different game, maybe easier from a certain point of view of the game because they sat deeper and we had difficulty in managing the dribbling.
“We had approached the game well, after the red card everything changed. We are disappointed, but now we have to start again.
“Toro are a very physical team that runs the whole game, you have to keep up a lot, but we are Milan and we must not have mental and physical problems. We had to win and play, I won’t say lighter but certainly with more personality.”
Some have suggested that Milan’s Coppa Italia exit could be a blessing in disguise as they fight to close the seven-point gap with league leaders Napoli. They’ll be hoping for a draw between Luciano Spalletti’s side and fellow Scudetto hopefuls Juventus tomorrow.
Tonali “yeah they are lucky they have less players on the field than us, football is a team game and the numerical advantage actually put us at a disadvantage, having one xtra person than them reall messes with how we deploy our formation and control the tempo. So basically what I am saying is they stopped letting us attack so we couldn’t win”