Lazio coach Igor Tudor opened up about his first month at the club, the lessons learnt from the Coppa Italia exit to Juventus and the dangers of Hellas Verona.
The Biancocelesti impressed in the second leg of their Coppa Italia semi-final tie with the Old Lady, doing well to go 2-0 up until their hearts were broken in the closing stages, when Arkadiusz Milik found a late goal to make things 3-2 on aggregate.
Lazio still have the chance to secure a spot in European competition and have done well under Tudor in Serie A, winning three of their four league matches under the Croatian coach. A win against Hellas Verona could be key as the end of the season fast approaches.
Speaking in a press conference via TMW, Tudor first spoke about Lazio’s condition after their recent clash with Juventus.
We’ll see today, we did two days of training. We have a day of training to prepare for a super important game, it’s the most difficult because it closes a cycle of many games in a few days. We can’t make mistakes, all the points are important and tomorrow we need to score points.
The Croatian coach provided an update on the injured players.
I have to evaluate the injured people today, some have recovered, others are halfway there, so we’ll see what today’s training tells us.
He commented on his expectations of the clash with Verona.
Verona are a tough team and in form, tomorrow will be super difficult for us. For their position in the standings it’s important, in Italy the matches are all difficult. Verona were an important stage for me, like the others I have experienced in my career.
In this job you grow step by step, I started coaching 13 years ago and I have grown in all my adventures, since the beginning with the students of Hajduk Split.
He looked back at his first month with Lazio.
There is no greater difficulty, the difficulties are always linked to the few days of training and the knowledge of the team which is still missing.
The good thing is the disposition of the players, I found them all very willing to not make any mistakes. In this month nothing went wrong in training.
Tudor spoke about the regrets from the first leg of the cup semi-finals against Juventus.
I don’t agree on which match we played better, there are always regrets. I also regretted yesterday’s training, it’s always right to criticize and self-criticize. I’m aware of all the mistakes made this month, it helps me to improve understanding where we went wrong.
It’s like a general in war, we always need to do an analysis and understand what happened, there are many things that affect performance and the result, the key is the time we use to grow.
The Croatian coach spoke about Valentin Castellanos and his suitability with Ciro Immobile.
You can see them together in a small moment of the match where you have to recover the result, sometimes more players who have goals in their legs help to score, but sometimes putting on all the forwards doesn’t mean being more dangerous.
Maybe if you haven’t worked on this solution, you can’t be dangerous.
He spoke highly about Mattia Zaccagni.
Zaccagni can play as a wide forward, he can play as a winger. As a wing back yes or no, he can struggle because he has to sacrifice a lot. He can also play behind the striker, for us he is an important player and we have missed him a lot.
He has shown his importance in the years spent at Lazio, he can give us an important hand, he will play from the start, but he can come on from the bench.
He touched on the growth of the mentality in Rome.
Everyone sees the mentality in a different way, the mentality is part of something that is even more important, and we talk about values.
Values that a coach wants to convey, to which are added aggression, wickedness and the desire to always do something more. These values are important not only in football but in all sports. Footballers are first and foremost men.
Finally, Tudor was asked if the Champions League was his objective.
I haven’t set any ranking objectives and neither has the club. The objective is to do well in all the matches, usually there are important differences between the teams, but at the end of the season the difference disappears.
I know if it’s easier to face Verona who have to save themselves or a team fighting for Europe.
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