Spalletti: Spartak staff mocked Napoli for the entire second half

The game at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona was an ugly one, with

taking the lead in the 11th second, but

Mario Rui

’s red card turning things around.

became the winners against Napoli, who have gained one point from two Europa League clashes.

After the game, there was also tension and Luciano Spalletti was booked for having a discussion with the Spartak staff.

“

Nothing happened…”

shrugged Spalletti on

Sky Sport Italia

.

“I simply went to salute one of the Spartak collaborators, because he mocked us for the entire second half. I just wanted to shake his hand.

“When you sit too deep, it becomes difficult to get back out, and we struggled. We moved to 5-3-1 and were suffering less, but we allowed one of their strikers to break and that’s when they made it 2-1.

“After Spartak also had a man sent off, we genuinely believed we could get it back on level terms, but instead we were too frantic. If we had remained calm, we would’ve equalised. Instead, they got a third goal.

“We can improve some things, and I expected to do better in the final 15 minutes, but we weren’t organised enough.”

Napoli suffered their first defeat of the season following their 2-2 draw with Leicester City and their six victories out of six Serie A matches.

“

I’ve lost many times, so it’s not exactly new!”

shrugged the coach.

“If we had scored a second goal in the first half, we would’ve won.

“We didn’t do well after going down to 10 men. It’s a game we can lose, there were some decisive incidents. If not for those four or five cynical fouls to stop our counter-attacks, we could’ve really hurt them, but we showed a lack of experience.”

Napoli were on the lookout for a left-back all summer, but they settled for Juan Jesus as a makeshift choice, and Spalletti was asked how they would work without Mario Rui.

“We have Faouzi Ghoulam, who we hope will recover soon.”

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