AC Milan head coach Stefano Pioli has described tomorrow night’s game against Dinamo Zagreb as an ‘opportunity’ for his side to go out and demonstrate their capabilities.
Milan will learn a lot about their prospects of making the Champions League knockout stages when they welcome the Croatian champions to San Siro, and it will not be an easy game at all at least on paper.
Dinamo Zagreb are top of the Croatian league having taken 25 points out of 27 available, building a 10-point lead to second place and allowing them to put everything into causing a shock in a tough group, as they already showed they can do by beating Chelsea 1-0 last week in Croatia.
Pioli was interviewed by Sky Italia on the eve of the game against Zagreb, with his comments transcribed by MilanNews and translated below.
On the match: “It’s an opportunity. We are fine, we have prepared well. We know the difficulties we will find, but we must play with our ideas and our certainties. We must play the best football possible.”
On Dinamo Zagreb: “We have prepared ourselves with great attention as we always do. We must always keep our level of play high. If we play at our level you win in Italy and in Europe, if you don’t you don’t win anywhere. They have a very compact defence and they are deadly on the counter-attack. They are a strong team.”
On the level Milan are at: “Last year’s experience has improved us. When we played with our qualities we also won in the Champions League. This must be our goal, our level must not go down otherwise you don’t even win in Italy.”
On the condition of the team: “They are fine in their heads and legs. We’ll get to this game well, then we’ll see what choices I’ll make tomorrow.”
On the match against Salzburg: “It was a difficult match against an opponent who played well in the first half. We have to be more precise technically than in Salzburg where we missed too many simple steps.”
It is expected that we will wasted another three points…. mediocre coach.
Why don’t you go support Man city and shut the hell up
You are not a Milan fan
Mediocre coach that got us the league title. You are not a Milan fan.