AC Milan head coach Stefano Pioli pointed out the errors his side made from a defensive point of view against Napoli, but also highlighted the positives.
All three goals came in the second half as Napoli took the lead when Matteo Politano converted a penalty after a foul from Sergino Dest, and while Olivier Giroud equalised it was substitute Giovanni Simeone who headed in the winner in the closing stages.
Pioli spoke during an interview with Milan TV after the game to reflect on the result and dissect the performance from his side, with his comments relayed by MilanNews.
“We know that we are a strong team, but we need to combine performance and result. I am convinced that this break will allow us to work more carefully, also because in the volume of the performance we lacked very little and we did better than our opponents,” he said.
On the second goal Napoli scored: “We were not very lucid, going to triple team an opponent prevented us from having superiority in the area on Mario Rui’s cross. It is a risk that we run being always so aggressive, but we will work on it trying to better analyse all situations.”
On De Ketelaere’s performance: “He had the best performance since he’s been here: he played a great game, being a point of reference between the lines. Then from a player with so much potential we must also expect some goals, but today I’m really positive about him. He comes from another league and a different mentality, we can’t expect him to solve matches on his own. But I’m really happy with him. ”
On the defensive struggles: “We played against Napoli who scored 4 goals against Liverpool and 3 against Rangers and we only let them shoot once. We would like to be perfect, but we can’t. We will work better on some situations, but we have conceded very little .Their second goal makes the difference, but it is not having scored more goals that made us lose the game.”
