As reported by TMWthese are the words of Ivan Juric in a press conference ahead of the match against Inter. “Good matches await us against the strongest teams in Italy. Inter deservedly won and I congratulate them, we will have to be at our best to score as many points as possible”
How do you see Inter?
“They play in front of their fans in a full stadium, they will want to demonstrate their value. In the end we shouldn’t care, we have to give our performance. They are strong, we want a great match”
What type of match will it be?
“Both they and we try to propose things, as a block we work well and so we concede few goals”
What did he say after Frosinone?
“I was very disappointed, it’s the first match after the Inter first leg that I really didn’t like. I don’t want to see that stuff anymore: in the next five matches I want my team back, the one that didn’t do anything wrong until Frosinone “
What do you need from Ilic, Vlasic and Sanabria?
“We know they have the quality to do something more”
Could the rumors about his future have had an impact?
“Things have been clear for some time. For me the team was at a high level, even when we lost. In the last match there was an alarm bell: it can happen, but I hope it doesn’t happen again. I don’t think they are rumors, we always did great”
Do voices bother you?
“I don’t follow anything, I coach and only think about the team. I don’t follow other things”
What is Ricci missing?
“I have a lot of faith in him. His work will bear fruit: in the last three or four matches I have seen a mature player, who attacks and defends. A complete player who we missed the other day. He is at a good point in his career. process: I told him, he is commanding situations. And he is in excellent physical condition. He will have a great future.”
Where will Tameze play?
“He is an absolute level professional, he is one of the few who saves against Frosinone. He deserves to be back in the middle, he breathes there and could return to midfield”
Do you have any regrets in this three-year period?
“We have to do well in these five matches, they can give us or take away a lot. In the end the calculations will be made: there are many positive things and many that could have been done better”
Is the question of bringing those in front closer together now set aside?
“I’m sorry about the points, in reality there is still time to achieve a great objective. Against Frosinone the draw may not be a tragedy, there are other matches in which we lost but I enjoyed the performance. Even if we had won against Frosinone, the performance would have been negative: my big disappointment is this, it wasn’t my team at all and it was passive. There was a general decline, my regret is this.”
Do you still believe in Europe?
“We are all sad and disappointed for Frosinone, but after the derby we were as enthusiastic as we were after the very high performances of the previous matches. We have to go back to doing that. We will find Inter who are champions, Bologna who play fantastically, but we have to get back to those levels. I hope to compete with the next opponents.”
Are you a bit Zapata addicted?
“I don’t think so. In the last match he was a bit tired, the data also says so. But there are other players who need to raise their level in certain situations so as not to be Zapata dependent”
Why are so few players scoring?
“I don’t know what to answer…You always try to score with lots of players, here we just succeeded. Could it be the story of the player who is like this? I don’t know, certainly in the past I’ve never had a striker who scored 20 goals, but I had many players who scored. This year we scored less, we have a striker who performed very well but others scored goals and I can’t say why.”
Was it foreseeable that Sanabria could return to scoring a little less, as his career suggests?
“I always start with optimism, if he has done it once he can do it again. Last year he set the record and we were all convinced that he could do even more. There are other players who have made certain things true and then have done less. Tonny can do very well in these last few games, he has also been unlucky between posts and goalkeeper saves: he has the ability to always score double figures.”
What do you think about the all-female referee panel?
“I hope that it becomes a normal thing, that the girls improve and that we no longer focus on whether the referee is male or female. It’s a great thing”
Can Masina return against Inter?
“We haven’t had great results on the left, we haven’t had what we hoped to achieve. Masina is more of a third, you could move Rodriguez further forward: Masina has always done well, let’s see for tomorrow”
Who are the injured?
“Pellegri returns, Sazonov doesn’t. Then the others are out: the stops by Schuurs and Djidji penalized us, also because we put Tameze behind and took him away from the front. It’s something that penalized us. Now we’re few, after January we are less and we have few solutions even during the match. We were unlucky with injuries like Gineitis, Schuurs and Djidji, all traumatic. We practically avoided muscle injuries, things went badly with our shoulders and knees and they are injuries you can’t deal with do nothing”
Is there a chance to see some debuts from the Primavera’s young players?
“We are attentive to the Primavera, we know them all. You can even make a young player debut, but I don’t know if it makes sense. If we focus on Gineitis we do so seriously. There are many competitive boys, as a concept I would like these boys to deserve it and if they won him like Gineitis it would be a nice thing for a player from the youth sector to arrive in the first team seriously, not as a gift.”
The hope is that next year no one gets hurt
“Let’s hope that no Toro player gets hurt….(laughs, ed.)”
