Spezia-Lazio, Semplici: “A great first half, heavy result. penalty? I say…”

Leonardo Semplici’s statements at the end of the match between Spezia and Lazio

Leonardo Simpletechnician of Spicespoke to the microphones of Sky Sports following the home defeat against Lazio of Mauritius Sarri. Below, the words of the Juventus coach. (Here for match commentary)

“We had a great first half, up until the penalty episode we deserved it and this gives me hope for the rest of the season. If we play like this with teams of our level, we could achieve good results. We have found the best formation at the moment, the result was a little too heavy but we have to keep working. Numbers don’t count, they scored three goals and so we’re here to lick our wounds: we’re sorry, there were a few too many mistakes but it’s part of the growth of the team. I hope that this match will serve us for what we have shown for 60-70 minutes”.

There were so many episodes in this match… “I won’t stop at the episodes, but it’s clear that they change the course of a match. I’m sorry for Ampadu’s expulsion, the second one didn’t seem like an obvious foul to me but the referee judged it that way. We need to be more careful, there we complicated life alone even on the penalty kick. Let’s move forward, let’s think about the next match: we did a lot of good things tonight, despite the negative result. Penalty? I prefer to look at my players and try to improve them, as well as perfecting my preparation challenges: I’m sorry to lose like this. We hadn’t done anything before and nothing happened after this defeat: the road is still long”.

A comment on the defensive error that led to the penalty foul? “We were very good and concentrated, then unfortunately there was that error at the exit with a Lazio player who only showed up in front of Dragowski. The referee judged Ampadu’s recovery to be irregular, that’s how it went. Let’s think about recovering the many absentees and let’s throw ourselves headlong into the next match”.

What did you get into? “That episode influenced the match a bit, we lost some certainties. When you make 3-4 mistakes with these teams, you get punished. We looked for depth and numerical superiority, we had prepared this match in the right way As I always tell the lads, when we win it’s their merit and when we lose the demerit is mine: I have to be even better at preparing them and making sure that some mistakes don’t affect their final performance. Lazio were good at taking advantage of that, but today we I saw a beautiful Spezia for 50-60 minutes and in my opinion we must continue like this”.