Milan coach Stefano Pioli believes his sides 1-1 draw with Salzburg is a ‘good result’ but was unhappy with the team’s overall performance. The Rossoneri went behind but managed to fight back to earn a vital point in the opening group stage match of the Champions League.
Speaking to Sky after the game, Pioli offered his assessment of the match and the overall performance:
It’s a good result, unfortunately we didn’t have a high level performance. They started better than us, then we grew into it. We could have done better, we still got a positive result even if we wanted to win.
The guys are the first to know when we play well and when we don’t. At the beginning we didn’t do well on the second balls. We lacked a bit of clarity in the technical plays. We had to be faster in the setting phase, we had to find better solutions. The team had to be more compact in order to recover more second balls.
We suffered their counters and we weren’t good in transitions. They didn’t press that hard, we made a little too many mistakes.
Tonali? I wanted to create numerical superiority on the wings, but he didn’t play as a winger.
Dinamo’s victory surprised me. This must teach us that in football there are no obvious matches. Salzburg are a good team. The next match against Dinamo Zagreb will already have an important weight.
They came on well. Dest has arrived recently, he still needs to know our game. He has good qualities, however. Origi has had a difficult summer, he needs to play and minutes. Pobega has put his characteristics into the game, that is physicality and runs behind. I am satisfied, with so many matches we need everyone.”
