Gennaro Gattuso confesses “I didn’t expect Hakan Calhanoglu to be such a complete player” as he thought the Milan midfielder was ‘slow’.
Calhanoglu has been reinvented as a left winger under Gattuso, the Turk scoring and assisting in Milan’s last five Serie A games, which yielded no defeats.
“Tomorrow there’s SPAL, a team that know what to do,” the Coach said at a Press conference for Saturday’s trip to SPAL.
Gennaro Gattuso confesses “I didn’t expect Hakan Calhanoglu to be such a complete player” as he thought the Milan midfielder was ‘slow’.
Calhanoglu has been reinvented as a left winger under Gattuso, the Turk scoring and assisting in Milan’s last five Serie A games, which yielded no defeats.
“Tomorrow there’s SPAL, a team that know what to do,” the Coach said at a Press conference for Saturday’s trip to SPAL.
“They have great physicality and with three defenders and two full-backs, they push up a lot. Tomorrow will be a very difficult match.
“Rodriguez? He can do better. Andre Silva? He must score more, but he has it in his locker. “No Kalinic? We preferred to let him rest so he’d a recurrence of his injury. I think we stopped him just in time and we didn’t want to risk losing him for a long time.
“Calabria’s red card? We’re not a dirty team, but sometimes we can be naive. We must improve in our decision-making and be more savvy.
“Objectives? Right now we want to win games and give continuity to our results and football.
“After that, we want to preserve our energy and not mess up when picking the team.
“Biglia? He’s a player that gives us balance. Bonucci? He’s playing like a leader. For now, however, we must think about winning games.
“The table is what it is and you can’t afford not to win a game that you dominated, like we didn’t against Udinese.
“My objective now is to get these players back to the value they had when they arrived, let them play together and become a team.
“I don’t think I deserve any credit in particular. My skill was to strongly believe that this team had to raise the bar in training and work like I wanted them to, with great intensity and few breaths for 90 minutes.
“The credit belongs to them. I’ve seen some of the lads look tired, yet they’ve kept going, even with their tongues out. If many of them have improved, it’s also for this reason.
“Calhanoglu, Suso, Bonaventura and Romagnoli have all improved. Let’s say that Hakan surprised me.
“I knew about his shooting but thought he was slow. I didn’t expect him to be such a complete player.”