Lazio coach Maurizio Sarri believes his team deserved to go out against AZ in the Conference League: ‘We don’t have the structure to play in three competitions’. The Biancocelsti took the lead against the Dutch side thanks to Felipe Anderson but were quickly pegged back through long-range Jesper Karlsson strike before Vangelis Pavlidis made it 2-1 on the night. A deflated Sarri spoke with Sky Sport Italia (as quoted by LaLazioSiamoNoi) at the end of the match, lamenting their lack of ‘structure’ to compete in more than one competition and explained why he thinks it was right that they were eliminated:
“We deserved to go out, after the 1-1 we didn’t believe in it anymore. The impression is that the team, after the 1-1, struggled to believe, unjustly because there was plenty of time to go for a goal. After their goal we played without the right energy and then it became hard.”
“Changes? There were three changes already planned to stay competitive by giving a few minutes of rest to those who are playing more. The problem? We don’t have the structure to do play than one competition at a time, I’m talking about mental structure, numerical structure, every time we make 5-6 changes we pay the consequences.
“We are not ready for these competitions, there is a lot of work to do. We have to improve from all points of view, they (AZ, ed) scored four goals in the Youth League against Real Madrid, we play Primavera 2, let’s start from there.”
“The Derby? From the 4th of January until today we’ve played every five days at most, there are players at their wits end for logical reasons. I knew that Europe would be a problem for us, choices are made based on the sensations and numbers of the moment, we couldn’t upset what we had done”.
“We lacked energy as well as managing the first leg. Tonight after the equalising goal the team dropped their heads and made a mistake because we had time to recover. Over the hundred and eighty minutes our opponents deserved to go through. This match tells us that we are not ready to face several commitments at the same time. Now let’s try to recover energy in view of the derby. The only positive aspect is the fact that we’ll play once a week. Pellegrini? He’s still not in top condition, but he can still grow a lot and give us a hand.”
