Pioli: “The important thing was to get through, no one will like meeting Milan”

Half satisfied. Stefano Pioli is happy to have passed the Europa League round, but at the same time he is disappointed to have conceded another three goals and lost the match. Milan reached the round of 16 thanks to a 3-0 win in the first leg, but lost 3-2 in Rennes. There are some regrets: “We will take with us the satisfaction of having passed the round in a very difficult match – says Pioli after the match -, but we could have made better use of the spaces and counterattacks. It wasn’t easy, but we qualified to the round of 16 and that counts.”

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Pioli continues: “We have important offensive potential, if they leave us space we can become dangerous. Then of course, we have to concede something less to our opponents. We can’t close like this, even with Pulisic and Leao we suffered, we have to be a team. Ours is a group of important players. The match against Monza went badly and we could have done better, now we have to think about the match against Atalanta.”

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In Pioli’s mind there are the eighths now. Tomorrow the draw in Nyon at 12: “Ambitions? Well, we want to try. In the championship our idea is to confirm our moment, to look ahead and achieve what we want. In the round of 16 we will meet a strong team, but no one will be happy to draw Milan”. Chapter Leao. The Portuguese hasn’t scored in the league for more than 4 months, but against Rennes he scored his second goal in a row in Europe: “I’m very happy for him – continues Pioli -, for us he’s decisive even when he doesn’t score. He has to keep working, to grow and believe in himself. The defensive phase can and must work better. At certain levels you pay for mistakes, and we have to work on them.” A final note is on Luka Jovic, scorer of one of the two goals: “He was naive in Monza, but we are talking about a player of great quality. He knows how to make the team play well with their backs to goal, with him we can also deploy the two tips. He’s doing well, he must continue to demand a lot from himself.”