Sarri: "La dichiarazione di resa non la facciamo, la classifica è corta. Lotteremo per la Champions fino alla fine"
Gian Piero Gasperini enjoys the deserved success against Lazio. “It was probably the best Atalanta of the season, we had one of those matches that can give you confidence against a direct competitor – explained the Atalanta coach – Champions? We try to do our best in every match, then we’ll see after 10 matches from the end. If we can get back there it would be an extraordinary achievement.” On Hojlund: “Hojlund is a diamond to be polished, he will grow and improve further. I have no doubts that he will have a great career.”
Hojlund remembers Haaland. “The characteristics are very similar, especially in accelerations. He is a very fast player, he is under eleven seconds over a hundred meters – added Gasperini -. For his height, he has a low center of gravity and an incredible step frequency: I am convinced he will great career, it doesn’t take long to figure it out. Technically it always shows different and better things”.
How Atalanta has changed compared to the past. “We’ve changed a lot and we have different characteristics: Gomez and Ilicic had an extraordinary technical rate, they catalysed our game and the others revolved around them. This is a team that needs to be more united, but it also has characteristics of speed that it didn’t have before Ederson also did very well tonight, it was one of his best matches. More generally, it was one of our best matches: Lazio were also playing very well, it was a great match.”
On the position of Ederson and Koopmeiners. “At the beginning of the year he played more advanced, and he had been very good in the first phase of the season. In the rest of the championship, however, he played his best games as a midfielder. He and Teun are interchangeable, and this is a strength for us: they can alternate in insertions and give less references to opponents”.
SARRI: “CHAMPIONS? WE WILL FIGHT TO THE END”
Maurizio Sarri analyzes the burning defeat against Atalanta. “We lost our clarity after the second goal, we got a little confused. We suffered at the start, then we had chances to equalize, and when it seemed we could do it we conceded the second goal, and we got confused.” On Immobile: “When it comes to certain players, having them back 100% is crucial. He’s been playing with good continuity over the last ten days: let’s hope he can continue, he’ll find his condition again”. The Champions League race becomes more uphill: “During a season battles are lost, the war will be long and we can’t declare surrender. We can’t think of stopping fighting: there are teams better equipped than us, but that doesn’t it means we don’t want to try to the end.” On the team’s bad moment: “After Milan we lost a bit of brilliance in the players who had made the difference at the start of the season. I think they are moments, they will find each other again. We had situations to put the game back together, excluding the final The feeling was that if we had made it 1-1 the match could have turned in our favour, and instead we conceded the second goal which put us on the sidelines. When we find our brilliance we’ll go back to what we were before.”