Parma, 10 January 2021 – Here is what Coach D’aversa had to say in the Tardini press room after Parma vs. Lazio:
“I felt the emotion the other day when I left my house and made the journey here to Parma, then we dedicated ourselves completely to preparing for a difficult match in a short space of time. Reflecting on the game, I am satisfied because for 60 minutes we stood up to a strong team like Lazio, what with the difficulties pre-match and having lost players in the warm-up and again after only a short period of the match. There is frustration about the goals that we have conceded where we were in trouble numerically, and with where we are in the table we cannot afford to make inexperienced and treacherous errors like this. Then when you go behind against a team like Lazio it becomes hard to recover at that moment in time due to the number of injuries and lack of players that we have at the moment”.
“The morale after a fifth defeat cannot be the best, the players’ self-esteem starts to drop, after a change of coach I believe that all the players feel responsible and it is clear they are not happy, they feel responsible too. Having said that, with today’s game there are 22 matches remaining in which we must not think about what has already happened, but on the present and the possible future in which we must focus on achieving our goal, and as difficult as this moment is we must think about why we are in this position in the table and search to remedy even the smallest detail. At the moment there are too many injuries, so everything must be taken care of, from nutrition to rest, we must not leave anything to chance, because it is too important”.
“Analysing today’s game, the team held their own for 60 minutes with all the difficulties of young players: Balogh came on today – and among others was one of the best performers – as did Ricci who up until today has played very little. We need to think about improving our points of view, it is clear that in terms of timing there is little, considering that next week we will once again have three games in seven days”.
“Just the fact that we created some chances in the first half is a positive aspect, I do not want to talk about the past because it is not my place but referring to today’s game I believe that we had a large fraction of the early chances and the fact that we are creating chances is a positive aspect. I will have to work with those players who do not yet know what is required in the offensive phase, although I must say that there has been maximum commitment: I used Sohm as a third striker and I must say that it worked well. It takes time but this time is often at the expense of results and of league position”.
“When you take over you have to reset everything because if we just sit here to brood over the mistakes made or the situation in which we find ourselves in, we will not climb out of it. Everything must be reset, both the negatives and the positives, because in football you do not live off the past. Everything that we have achieved has been because we have known what needs to be done to get that result, certainly no one has ever given us anything, every year we have had difficulties. We are experiencing a difficult moment right now, we have to be good to get out of it”.
