After the win against Newcastle, Rafael Leao spoke to the media and shared his thoughts on the Champions League exit. He stated that it wasn’t the outcome they wanted, but that full focus will be on the Europa League now
Leao made his return in tonight’s game after recovering from an injury. It perhaps showed that it was his first game since coming back, struggling to find his groove especially in the first half. In our player ratings, he was handed a 5.5/10 after a big miss in the second half as well.
Speaking to Prime Video after the game, as cited by MilanNews, Leao shared his thoughts on the game and the future of Milan in the Europa League. He assured the fans that their focus now is to win the competition.
In the end, you did your job and you celebrated at the end…
“We wanted to continue in the Champions League, we knew that without victory we couldn’t think of moving forward. We celebrated for the three points.”
On the Europa League…
“Now we continue in the Europa League, Milan have never won it. Now we enter this competition to try to win it.”
What game was your game like?
“Difficult, difficult. These moments of responsibility help me grow. In the first half a little so-so, the team helped me raise the level in the second half.”
What did you think about the shot hitting the post?
“Disappointed, it was important for me to return with a goal. The most important thing was to continue in the Champions League, unfortunately we weren’t able to reach that goal. But we continue in Europe and that’s fine.”
Milan will face Monza next in the league and need to claim a win, following the disappointing defeat against Atalanta last time out. The game is scheduled for Sunday and it’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s first league game since re-joining the club as a director.
Not a single Ac Milan should say smth like “we are in Euro League and that’s fine”, no, that’s not fine at all.
That’s because we are Milan, we don’t play for the UEFA Cup/Europa League, we leave that to Inter and Juventus(and Parma).
After taking the lead I switched to Dortmund Paris match in the last 5 minutes. So Milan were able to celebrate the win after knowing the team are knocked out? Pathetic. Europa league mentality already. Now Leao can go and be a Mbape there.
Europa League is going to be hard, Liverpool is in it, Leverkusen is in it and currently they are far stronger than us. Also there are several teams that, in many circumstances, can also beat us.
Europa League is a tournament I really hate, there is no reward to winning it for a team with 7UCL, but getting eliminated in any stage would be a humiliation for us.
Did dortmund and PSG work together to qualify for next round. Fifa need to investigate this matter 😀
Doesn’t matter tho, it’s us that put ourself in this kind of situation.
I would say that a certain referee’s decision in 96th minute in the 5th round kept PSG at second place, instead of 4th.
By no means am I saying the fault for dropping out of CL is not ours, as we could have been 1st in the group with tiny bit more effort on the goal in the first 2 games, but still… even Newcastle deserves more than PSG to qualify for 2nd or 3rd place.
The promotion was lost on the first 2 rounds. The away loss to PSG is acceptable, but the ine at home to Borussia, after we held them away, is really not OK. You have to win your home matches and you have to keep some clean sheets away, and you’ll go through. Good turnaround in Newcastle, that was wonderful to watch, and we were surprisingly organized and strong defensively in the first . Pity about the goal, really, om the half bounce, 4 inches from Maignan’s middle finger…
Next year, with the 8 matches against 8 different opponents, who knows what will happen. There won’t be any ‘group of death’ at least.
It is not ‘fine’ fo play the Europa league, but it will be some additional revenue, several additional European games that provide some experience of playing away games and keep the rhytm of playing every 3 days – We’re gonna need all of that when the UCL jumps from 125 to 189 games next season.