Benítez: "We deserved more"

The 'Azzurri' coach disappointed with Coppa Italia exit

09/04/2015sscnapoli.it/rafabenitez.com

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Rafa Benítez struggled to come up with an explanation as to why Napoli were beaten in the semi finals of the Italian Cup by Lazio (0-1) after his team dominated large parts of the fixture and created the best chances. Lazio had just one clear chance on goal which was converted by Lulic in the 79th minute to put them through to th final against Juventus. After the game the SSC Napoli head coach spoke about how disappointed he was to go out of the competition but was also keen to praise his players: "We have created many scoring chances, some of them were clear, but again we have not taken advantage of that and we ended up losing. We deserved a much better result".

"First of all congratulations to Lazio for their victory and also qualifying for the final of the Coppa Italia. Regarding the match, all I can do is analyse everything that has happened on the pitch, and I think it's clear we could have scored six or seven times in the game. Sometimes you do not get the goals you deserve and that has happened to us today but if we had taken advantage of at least one of our opportunities we would be talking about a different game".

Benítez insists it's now important that they move on and focus on the challenges that lie ahead for the club, "now we have to look forward, we have no choice and there's no point in dwelling on this result. The team created so many chances and the players showed they are alive and capable of playing an attacking game. And we hope that in future we can be more effective in front of the opposition's goal. There are still nine games in Serie A this season, which is quite a lot, and we have to give one hundred percent in each and every one of them".

After the defeat Benítez was asked whether he felt the teams morale would be badly affected: "When a team gets to an opponents penalty area many times and fails to score players may not be happy and that is natural. But what is also true is that it has only taken one goal from Lazio, just one, to put them through to the final of the Italian Cup. But I will say again we can analyse this game and look at all the opportunities we created. It's clear we have to improve and be more decisive and devastating in attack, scoring more goals. But we are returning to the right path. Now we have to prepare for the match against Fiorentina and produce more positive results".