SIENA - "An ugly loss." Andrea Stramaccioni could not help but admit
it as he spoke to journalists after Siena v Inter.
"I’ve never been one to look for excuses and I’m not going to start now; it was an ugly defeat, full stop. But thanks to this strange season we’re still in the hunt. I for one am not going to hide. We’re all at fault but I’m the coach, so I can’t be one to hide. However, I’m convinced that we can achieve our goals just the same," continued the Nerazzurri coach.
Stramaccioni is not giving up, and his team has no plans to do so either: "We’ve got to get back to being the team that was one point off the league leaders. We’re still the same team and I’m still the same coach. However, the fact that the team never gave up when playing a man down is important. The lads gave everything they had. They could have crumbled even further with that disadvantage. We need to get back to being what we were. We need to turn around this negative, bitter, ugly run. This has been the worst moment so far but I’m convinced we’ll turn things around."
The Inter coach was then asked to comment on the three new arrivals, in particular on Mateo Kovacic: "Let’s not worry about the new arrivals. They’ve only trained with us a few times. However, they played their game. I repeat: all of us had a poor match, but we’re there just three points away, and we’re not giving up. The season’s too long for us to throw in the towel. We’ll find the key to turn this around. Kovacic? He’s a high quality prospect and he showed personality – even when we were playing a man down. We’re certain we’ve made a valuable investment. He has loads of quality and he’ll show it on the pitch. In my opinion we’ve strengthened the team and signed interesting players. I’m happy with the squad and the transfer market campaign. What I’m not happy with is this period we’re going through, and we also played without enough fire."
The discussion moved back to the match analysis and Stramaccioni was asked how much certain incidents affected the outcome: "The possible penalty for Cassano? Their first goal being offside? I want to move past these things. However, the last penalty I can remember is the one that came against Sampdoria, which was at the end of October… But today we didn’t start badly at all. Once we equalised I was convinced we had the momentum, but Sestu’s goal really hurt us. And I’m certain we would have played a great second half had we had 11 men."
