Carlo Ancelotti was quick to call for caution after Napoli’s Europa League win over Salzburg on Thursday, despite the 3-0 scoreline.
"It’s a good result, but it’s all to play for still," he said after the match at the San Paolo. Winning 3-0 of course makes us confident for the return leg, but we don’t want to be making calculations there in Austria."
About the match: "We’ve got 90 minutes to play and anything can happen. We’ll be playing at a tough ground – we’ll have to be ready for every eventuality. If we play like we did at the end today, we’ll be taking a big risk. We did a lot of things well today, particularly in our build up play, but in other areas we were less impressive. We need to work on those areas to improve and get our approach spot on for the second leg."
The boss was asked about his team being without Kalidou Koulibaly and Nikola Maksimovic for the second leg, with both having picked up suspensions: "That’s the situation but we’ve got excellent players we can rely on in those roles. We could have avoided Koulibaly’s booking, because we had the ball. We’ll need to avoid some of the shortcomings we showed at the end there. If we’re out of position we’re vulnerable and tonight Alex Meret did really well on a couple of occasions, producing key saves."
On the second leg: "We’ll need quality in Austria, as well as intelligence and sacrifice. We know that the game could be dangerous and how good the opposing side is. We’ll need to be ready and play with the intensity that Salzburg will doubtless bring to the game."
(Photo Getty Images)
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Source: legaseriea.it