Conte rage after Napoli fumble against 10 men: ‘This should hurt us’

Antonio Conte was furious with his Napoli squad after a costly Champions League draw to 10-man Copenhagen. ‘It hurts me and it ought to hurt my players. We must be angry with ourselves.’

The Partenopei knew this was a must-win game, as they were on level points with the Danes going in and it was a head-to-head for position to avoid early elimination from Europe.

It all seemed to be going their way when Thomas Delaney was sent off just 35 minutes in for his high boot catching Stanislav Lobotka on the knee, an incident that was spotted by VAR after it was initially only a yellow card.

Scott McTominay’s towering header also put Napoli in front, but when Alessandro Bastoni gave away a penalty and Vanja Milinkovic-Savic parried it, Jordan Larsson managed to turn in the rebound.

“We ought to be disappointed,” confessed Conte to Sky Sport Italia.

“The game was in the right condition to win and reach the play-offs. We might have a thousand excuses, but tonight they don’t fit, because the match was going so well with those circumstances that we had to win.

“We showed for the fourth game in a row that we struggle. We were in total control, with 11 men against 10, so even if you’re missing 10 players and feeling fatigue, you have to win these games. You just have to.

“There is disappointment because we didn’t manage it, so evidently our level right now is not suited to this competition. We only have eight Champions League points, we’ve got to all accept the blame here, you’ve got to take home the result in a situation like this. There’s not much else to say, we just have to be angry with ourselves, because it was a golden opportunity, and perhaps we didn’t realise what was at stake.

“It was like we were riding a bike downhill and somehow managed to make it go uphill all by ourselves.”

This means Napoli will likely crash out of the Champions League completely next week, unless they manage to beat Chelsea.

Before that, they also have a crucial Serie A showdown with Juventus on Sunday, which could shake up the Scudetto race.

“It’s the end of January, we will try to do our best with the players at our disposal,” shrugged Conte.

“We must try to offer the best version of ourselves. We could’ve done a lot better today, there is so much disappointment tonight, as we had everything going our way and we managed to ruin it. We’ve got to reflect on that.

“From tomorrow we’ll start preparing for Juve, we’ll see if we’ve got 11 or 12 players available. What we need to say tonight is we ought to win the game, end of story.”

It is no secret that Napoli have an injury crisis, missing David Neres, Matteo Politano, Amir Rrahmani, Alex Meret, Kevin De Bruyne, Andre Frank Zambo Anguissa and Billy Gilmour.

However, Giovanni Di Lorenzo said that they came out with completely the wrong attitude for the second half, so why did that happen?

“What I told the squad was that we had the game in hand, so it was important to score a second and third goal. I’ve been here many times, I know in these games any incident can happen and you are then left licking your wounds,” replied Conte.

“Well, it happened, and now we lick our wounds. It’s disappointing, because for all the thousand excuses we could have, we were dominating this match and managed to make it difficult for ourselves. That is sad, as we work so hard.

“This has to annoy us, because if it doesn’t annoy us, then it means we don’t want to grow and improve. It’s not possible to let Copenhagen back into this game down to 10 men, understanding the importance of this match. We know what football is like, you have to be fired up and hungry from the first second to the last, otherwise you risk this.

“It’s a draw that hurts me, and it ought to hurt my players too.”