Maurizio Sarri felt Napoli made an unusual number of mistakes against Real Madrid, but hit back at President Aurelio De Laurentiis.
Lorenzo Insigne had opened the scoring at the Bernabeu, but Karim Benzema, Toni Kroos and Casemiro turned it all around for a 3-1 first leg result.
Maurizio Sarri felt Napoli made an unusual number of mistakes against Real Madrid, but hit back at President Aurelio De Laurentiis.
Lorenzo Insigne had opened the scoring at the Bernabeu, but Karim Benzema, Toni Kroos and Casemiro turned it all around for a 3-1 first leg result.
“Real Madrid are the best team in the world until proved otherwise. The real pity here is that we made too many mistakes and we usually don’t make that many,” said Sarri in his Press conference.
The second leg at the Stadio San Paolo is on March 7 and a 2-0 win would put Napoli through on away goals.
“We will aim to win 2-0 and approach it that way, but then obviously we need to fight it out with the opponents. We’re not on our own here.
“We hope that in the second leg we can be better on a technical level, make fewer mistakes and create more chances. We might not have many chances of qualifying, but we’ve got some and we need to make the most of them.
“The sensation I get here is that I feel we could’ve done more tonight.”
Napoli President De Laurentiis blasted Sarri and the players after the 3-1 defeat, so Sarri was asked about this.
“I am at training every day and I am the one who chooses. The President can express his ideas, I’d rather he expressed them directly to me, but in the end I decide.
“We had Milik on the bench because we know that in his condition he cannot do more than 10-11 minutes, but in that spell he could give us something. Why experiment? We could’ve lost 5-0 in that case.
“If we make that many mistakes, it’s difficult to find courage. If you misplace the second pass, you won’t build any pressure. Our choice of passing wasn’t always on point.
“Playing Real Madrid in this stadium may well have influenced some of our younger players, but you do grow up through games like this. It’s all valuable experience.
“Despite the result, I think Napoli deserve to be here. Real Madrid had their best performance of the last three months – and I watched all of them.
“We had by no means our best performance and if we play at our level, we can be a lot closer to them.
“Despite the fact it was not his best game, Dries Mertens had two clear scoring opportunities against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu. I wouldn’t call that a rubbish night for a striker.”
De Laurentiis also said Insigne was the only player who showed determination.
“Diego Maradona spoke to the team for about 30 seconds beforehand and a legend like that could spark something. In fact, the first 20 minutes were our best of the game.
“I cannot evaluate the determination of a side that makes too many misplaced passes. Did we miss counter-attacks because of determination or because we had the wrong passes?
“You cannot hope to trouble Real Madrid when losing the ball 20-30 times in your own half. I saw more of a technical problem than one of attitude.
“People are acting as if we had a terrible game and that’s not the case. We could’ve played better, certainly, but Real Madrid had relatively few chances compared to their usual standard.
“We are not talking about a terrible performance, but one where we made more technical mistakes than usual. We know we can do more, clearly it’ll be difficult against a side that tends to score, so we need several goals in the second leg.
“The important thing is that the team believes it can do it. Without the whole issue of knowing it’s two legs, we might also have more focus on that one night.”