Spalletti: "The team deserved a different result"

MILAN - "The team deserved a different result. The guys played a brilliant game and it’s not easy to accept this defeat." This was what Luciano Spalletti had to say after Inter vs. Juventus. "We spent a lot of energy due to being a man down and in the final moments it came back to hurt us. Especially with the goal that made it 2-2, that was a truly harsh goal with how it bounced around." 

"We weren’t at full strength and that incident changed the game. The team deserved something else for the great sacrifice that we showed on the pitch. We’ll have to get over the disappointment and that will be the hardest thing to manage. It won’t be easy to make these guys accept that defeat, you have to give them credit. This match meant a huge amount to us and the whole environment around us. It will be hard to put it behind us. The lads have great heart and are real professionals." 

"With the ball from Candreva to Mauro, we also had a chance to make it 3-1 but with ten men, we gave a lot and we were under the cosh in lots of different situations both down the left and right. We were made to pay for it in the final minutes which are always crucial in these matches and that came after we controlled long spells of the game well. At the end, we also had a chance to make it 3-3." 

Inevitably, there was also questions about the refereeing: "It becomes difficult from my point of view to comment. Looking back, it doesn’t seem to me that the management of the match was balanced."