Napoli, Antonio Conte: "Good at winning in emergency"

These are the words of Napoli coach Antonio Conte to Sky Sport after the success over Sporting: “Tonight we were very good at winning despite the team&#8217s emergency, which led us to a completely different defensive phase than last year but we had answers”.

“In these two days I talked with the boys that in Milan they did not play badly, but the two goals conceded are situations where we could have done better and we talked about it. The team in general in commanding the game I see it more mature, compared to last but we must not suffer the fear of taking goals, because then you close yourself off, you struggle and risk”.

“We have two options to play with four midfielders and try to continue on this path and we do it because there is room for improvement. But we also have the path of 4-3-3 with more qualitative by also inserting De Bruyne, but there must always be the will to move forward.”

“The important thing is to keep some principles, when the ball overtakes us we have to have the strength to go back, and then in the construction of the game after 60-70 minutes whoever comes on the field gives a new energy. The guys on the field continue to do what we did last year that led us to win the Scudetto, knowing that with 4 midfielders we dominate the game more, but maybe it is more complicated because you have one less outside player on the left. But today we can say that with a year behind us we can do both”.

These, on the other hand, are the words of Belgian Kevin De Bruyne: “We won on a beautiful night for the team, we played a good game against a Sporting that was strong technically and physically. But we knew how to create opportunities, we scored the lead, then suffered the penalty but we knew how to come back to attack and find the second goal”.

“On the first goal I was trying to get into the space between two opponents and find space to serve Hojlund who was running and he was able to do the rest. Hojlund has so much quality, he is similar to Haaland who is doing important things in his career, but the two forwards are similar, both are left-handed they know how to attack the space. For Hojlund it was a great night and he will help us make many matches with his goals. Problems with Conte? Never! I am a winner, I want to win and make a difference, there&#8217s never been a problem with the coach”.