Jose Mourinho calmly analyzed the disappointing result of last night’s Coppa Italia elimination game against Cremonese in his post-match press conference.
“Before this defeat and before imagining that today could end like this, I said it’s one thing to play one game a week and one every three days. It’s difficult because there are players who are struggling individually, my medical and sports science staff told me two days ago that there was a great risk of someone getting hurt.”
“So, I thought about protecting these players. Tammy, Matic, Smalling and Dybala weren’t supposed to play today. I think it’s not fair to say that because they didn’t start we lost, we all lost tonight. When you commit technical errors, turnovers, they are based on technical qualities, but most of all it is a level of concentration, the approach to the match has not been correct, maybe someone from an individual point of view did not prepare for the match.”
“From the point of view of confidence, at 0-1 you lose a ball and you don’t have the personality to go out and play up front. We have a game in three days.”
“Why Saturday and not Sunday or Monday? Sunday is when the Italian team plays rugby at the Olimpico, so on Monday the field will be destroyed. For this reason we play on Saturday. We have to recover some people from a physical point of view, we have to enter the field with the pain of this defeat still in our blood. Sometimes I say to enter the field and forget about the defeat, but on Saturday we have to enter the field with the pain of defeat.”
