No need to dig deep for gold in this monumental butt-hurt at least:
Sarri: 'Not the usual Napoli' | Football Italia
Maurizio Sarri confessed Napoli were “not the usual team” against Udinese and Gonzalo Higuain “felt he was the victim of an injustice.”
The 3-1 loss at the Dacia Arena puts them six points adrift of Juventus, who also have a superior head-to-head record, with seven rounds to go.
“Aside from the errors of individuals, the team did not have the usual game and it was not the usual team,” said the Coach in a Press conference.
“Udinese had their best performance of the season. When we come back from breaks for international duty we always play below par. Add the lunchtime kick-off and we struggled to be our usual selves.
“As the problem was a team one, I take responsibility. You can talk about moves and substitutions, but it’s all rubbish. We did badly as a team and certainly prepared the game badly.
“We have to improve in these situations if we want to be a team at the very top. It is strange that a side second in the League plays at this time, but we have to get points anyway. I don’t like this spread out fixture list, I’ve always said so.”
There was extra pressure on Napoli, as leaders Juventus beat Empoli 1-0 last night, and it got to Higuain when he had to be dragged away after a red card.
“It seems ridiculous to me that for six weeks in a row we play after Juventus. The anger and irritability can come out, it happens, even if I saw far worse scenes two weeks ago,” said Sarri, referring to Leonardo Bonucci’s unpunished head-to-head with a referee.
“I didn’t offend anyone today and was sent off, I just said he was doing a bad job of refereeing. Unfortunately I experience games intensely and I’d have to change my nature to suit them.
“I didn’t like the way the referee judged fouls and cards, at all. Higuain told me he accidentally trod on his opponent and therefore felt he was the victim of an injustice. Being very fond of this city, he had a strong reaction. I saw a tougher reaction 15 days ago, though.”
Must Napoli now wake up from their Scudetto dream and focus on keeping second place away from Roma?
“We must be able to shake off this disappointment and maintain the anger accumulated during this defeat to use it positively from next week.
“Nobody can diminish what we achieved, as we are six points off Juve and are mad enough to think we can become one of the best teams in Italy in such a short space of time.
“We do need to improve in how we deal with pressure, though.”