Vecchi wants Roma lesson learned before Genoa

APPIANO GENTILE - Stefano Vecchi hopes his young charges will have learnt from their Primavera Coppa Italia defeat to Roma when they resume league duties against Genoa next weekend.

The U19s were beaten 1-0 by the Giallorossi in the first leg of their Coppa Italia semi-final tie on Saturday and the boss was none too pleased with his team's showing.

"Roma were really up for it on Saturday, whereas we produced our worst performance in the three games we've played them this term,” Vecchi told Inter Channel.

“We got our approach and our mindset all wrong – you can't play like that against a strong side. We didn't make mistakes because we were afraid but because we tried to be too clever. We'd been enjoying a great run of form recently so perhaps we thought it would be easy.”

The Nerazzurri Under-19s will try to overturn the single-goal deficit when they welcome Roma to the Suning Development Centre in honour of Giacinto Facchetti for the second leg on Wednesday 25 January. Before then, however, they have two league fixtures against Genoa and Palermo to contend with.

Inter go into Sunday's meeting against surprise package Genoa straddling the summit of Group C on 30 points, three ahead of their rivals in fourth place, yet the Primavera coach knows his boys will have to be on their game if they are to remain top of the pile.

“Genoa have shown they're a great team and they're having an excellent season. We knew from the start of the year that they'd be a tough side to face,” Vecchi continued.

“Hopefully we'll have learnt something from losing to Roma. We want to get ourselves straight back on track in the league.

“We're going to have to be at our best if we want to maintain top spot, because our rivals have got easier fixtures.

“We're in a tough group with lots of strong sides - it's a good thing because it helps our youngsters improve but it also means we'll have to pull out all the stops if we want to finish in the top two.”