Ranieri: 'I'm satisfied with Inter'

Claudio Ranieri maintains he was “satisfied with the performance” despite Inter’s home defeat to rivals Juventus.
The Nerazzurri can wave goodbye to any hope of the Scudetto after falling 11 points behind the leaders and could be sucked into the relegation zone this weekend.

“I am satisfied with the performance,” insisted the Coach of their 2-1 loss at San Siro.

“We did come up against the form side in Serie A. Juve were clinical in taking the chances they had, while we had to balance things out and at a certain point ran out of energy to fight back.

“I said yesterday that we must not look at the table now. There are still 84 points up for grabs, Milan won the tournament with 82 last year. Now we do go home with a bitter taste in our mouths.

“We played well and held out against the Juve efforts, so it’s irritating that we lost. I saw a team that was not in great shape, but still fought on a level playing field with Juventus, which is a good sign.

“I did not see any huge gap between the two teams. Inter expressed themselves well, so I am not worried by this defeat.”

Ranieri also explained some of his tactical decisions during the encounter.

“Mauro Zarate was fit, it was my decision to take him off, as I tried to attack in a different way and it didn’t work. I introduced Luc Castaignos to attack Stephan Lichtsteiner and cover the left flank better, but in a match situation he is often timid.

“Unfortunately, I had to take into account the fitness levels of my squad. We certainly need to work on some things, but the lads showed determination and heart, which is what we’ll base our progress on.”

There were protests from Juventus after Luca Castellazzi clattered into Claudio Marchisio, but the referee opted not to award a sixth penalty of the season against Inter.

“The penalty? From the bench it looked like it could’ve been given.”

Raineri is really great coach;

its impossible that you can see another coach calming down a team with performances like INTER, everyone would go wild