“It’s about ambition, concentration, desire” – Amorim tears into Milan after Ferencvaros defeat

By: Oliver Fisher

AC Milan head coach Ruben Amorim did not hold back on his team’s performance after the 2-0 Europa League defeat to Ferencvaros.

Milan needed a win having lost two of their first three games in Europe, and instead they responded with perhaps their worst performance under Amorim. Lenny Joseph’s second-half brace was enough for Ferencvaros to emerge with three points that their performance merited in truth.

The decision was made to rotate again with six changes from the win over Inter, but in the second half the likes of Christian Pulisic, Diego Moreira, Mario Gila and Luka Modric all came on. The end result was the same: frustration and an inability to piece together the required quality.

Amorim spoke to Sky after Koni De Winter offered his opinion that it is a psychological issue for the team. The words from the manager were transcribed by MilanNews.

You issued a warning that today would be complication…

“There’s no explanation. There’s nothing I can say, especially about the first half. I don’t remember another first half like it. It’s about ambition, concentration, desire. We gave away opportunities, we gave away stupid gifts. We weren’t prepared to play football tonight.”

How do you explain it?

“It’s hard to explain. We simply weren’t ready to move from the derby to this other competition. When you play for Milan, you have a responsibility, and you can’t show up like that. I probably didn’t ensure the team took to the field ready either.”

De Winter says it’s a matter of mentality…

“We’re not ready to be competitive on two fronts. We need to work on our way of looking at football and how we approach matches. There are no excuses tonight, there’s nothing I can say. “I usually have a lot to say in defence of our team, but not tonight. We need to be more humble and understand what happened.”

Is this attitude thing coachable?

“Maybe I did something wrong these past two days, but not mentally. This team had similar problems last year. We have to find a solution. Tonight we weren’t ready, we weren’t brave. If we don’t win, we’ll have to do everything we can to turn things around, and we didn’t see that. “Everyone needs to train like Pavlovic. He’s ready to die in training. He’s a good example. Sometimes when players don’t start, they struggle. But there are no excuses; we should have won even with those who started.”

And what can be done?

“We have to fix this! We can’t just assume it’s going to be like this. We should have done so many things better tonight. Just being better on second balls would have been much better. We weren’t in the game tonight.”

How important is the Europa League now? It’s a complicated situation…

“I have to focus on the league, obviously, but we also have to do well in the Europa League. We must and can win games despite the rotation. We have to be ready – we’re not now – to play and win every three days. “But I won’t give up on this competition. But as long as the mathematics don’t condemn us, we’ll fight in this competition as we do in the others.”