MILAN - "The best thing to emerge from this is that we're improving, tonight I saw our best performance yet in terms of the football we produced." This was Andrea Stramaccioni's initial reaction to his team's 3-2 win over Sampdoria.
"We created a lot and their goal came from a mix-up between Samuel and Ranocchia. It was an unfortunate incident but overall I must congratulate my players, this is an Inter side on the up. The second half was perfect. I saw our hunger tonight, we never switched off, that's great and we'll keep working one match at a time. Our strength is our whole squad, tonight's win was once again a team effort."
Stramaccioni then spoke about the front three describing the system as "unconventional because none of the three like playing out wide. Diego works down the middle and Cassano and Palacio drop in behind him."
His thoughts then turn to Juventus, beginning with the fact that he named his strongest side, not resting anyone ahead of Saturday's match: "It's perhaps because I'm new to Serie A but that's how I see things," he smiled. "Had I made changes, I would have sent out the wrong message to my players. Today you saw Inter's best XI. When it comes to Juve on Saturday, I'm lucky because I'm relatively calm, perhaps I'm not aware of the significance of it. But I believe that whether you play a team at the top or bottom of the league, at Inter you always have to try and win. The only advantage Juventus have over us is their players are used to playing together. But I'd rather keep my players.
"Guarin has the most potential of our midfielders, he was excellent tonight. I'm pleased with his display, but not surprised, I know how good he is."
Finally the coach was asked whether the decision to send off Costa was the right one: "In my opinion, with the laws as they are, it was a red card. We had a player sent off in similar circumstances in the Europa League. We can look at the laws later."
