Allegri: "I didn’t need the early Champions League qualification to know that I have a great team"

Here’s what Massimiliano Allegri had to say in his press conference ahead of tomorrow's match against Catania in San Siro:

“One thing’s for sure: Tomorrow will be a very tough match because they’re going through a very good period and I think any team that comes from five positive results, beating Inter and Napoli as well as drawing with Fiorentina and Lazio away and drawing with Juventus at home is a team that’s playing well, is well organized and has quality players.

We had a good month ourselves; we’ve managed to climb the table a bit and got through to the next round of the Champions League. Tomorrow, we’ll make one last push before the break. So we’ll have to be able, and I think we are, to understand the important and the difficulty of tomorrow’s game. If we understand that, then it’s downhill from there. If we don’t, we’ll complicate our lives. We’ll have to be aggressive and patient becasue it’ll be anything but easy. They’re good at cutting off space and defending well and when the push forward, they have players who can cause you problems. Rather than playing a top game tomorrow, I think the important thing will be to win. We’ll have to see.”

“When we played against Juventus, we didn’t have any decent results behind us like we do now. We’ll be without a few players tomorrow for various reasons, Cassano, Boateng, Novcerino and Nesta are not available. But regardless of who plays tomorrow and who’s on the bench, we‘ll have to be mentally, physically and technically prepared because what counts tomorrow is the win, the three points. Style won’t count tomorrow, only winning counts. We’ll be up against a team that concedes very little and are very good at counter attacking.”

“I didn’t need the early Champions League qualification to know that I have a great team. But we still need to improve because games like Tuesday’s game need to be won after playing well and creating chances for 60-65 minutes and that’s something we have to improve. We need to believe in ourselves more because sometimes you can be in complete control of a game and then because of some anomaly you concede and then you have to play differently for the last half hour.”

“The doubts are Ambrosini or Van Bommel and Bonera or Yepes. I think Zambrotta will start at left back. Emanuelson, Robinho and Ibra could be an option Inzaghi will get called up. He’s been much better this week.”

“The important thing was that it went well. We trust that Antonio will be back in 4 to 6 months. I spoke with him after the operation and he was calm and collected. The operation itself was nothing compared to the anxiety that we all felt on Sunday. The doctors were excellent. The intervention was not invasive and within a few hours, Antonio was already laughing and this is an important thing. I hope he’ll b eback soon because he was enjoying the best season of his career.”

“Now we have to think about Catania then there’s the break and then the club will think about whether or not we need players in January. Now is not the time to talk about it. Tomorrow we have Catania which is an important game and then we’ll have played 8 games in a month. Then there’s the break, then we write our letters to Santa Claus and I really don’t believe that Juventus will let Del Piero go.”

“Some things you have to be a part of. It’s not the same looking from the outside in. the fact that Ibra’s autobiography came out just before the Barcelona game is another reason to do well.”

“I don’t get the people who attack Van Bommel saying that we concede more when he plays. Mark has always done well and he can’t be attacked. As far as Robinho goes, last season he got 15 goals and a few assists, this season he’s been out injured for two months. Now he’s back and he can perform well for about an hour but not the whole game. We can only be optimistic for the goals that he’ll score. The result in Minsk wasn’t down to superficial things. We made a lot of mistakes in the second half and we gave them the chance to cause us problems. We could have avoided the penalty. After we scored we stopped playing as a team.”

“I don’t think Inter is out of the running for the title. Last year they were 13 points away from us, now they’re 9 and 11 points from the top and there are a lot more games to be played. They have one of the strongest squads in the country.”

“Stephan El Shaarawy has already been useful against Udinese. Boateng made his choice not to play international football. I didn’t talk to him about it. If he decided it, then it must be the best thing for him. He chose not to go, but he could be called up all the same.”

“We’ll be up against Barcelona. We’ll see. If we’re better the

n we’ll win. If they’re better, then they’ll win. Otherwise it’ll end in a draw.”/Source: acmilan.com/

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