Vincenzo Montella has said that everyone at Fiorentina is angry following the team’s poor run of results, with the Coppa Italia fourth round clash against Cittadella providing an opportunity for the side to get back to winning ways.
“We’re angry,” said Montella at his pre-match press conference on Monday. “We have an important aim and that’s to get through to the next round. We’re up against an established Serie B team who were in the play-offs last year and have been playing together under the same coach for several years. In that respect it won’t be an easy game, but we need to focus on our own strengths, on the courage and energy we need to show and on reproducing the temperament we showed the other night.”
Montella urged his young side to play with freedom as they look to rediscover their early-season form.
“We want to play with heart, show our quality and make sure we’re a bit less frenetic,” he said. “When we were in good form we knew there could be some difficult moments and this is one of them. We need to analyse it with a cool head and make sure the anxiety doesn’t creep in. We have 14 players under the age of 23 so we need to encourage them because in the last game they showed that the team is there and that they are playing with heart.”
Fiorentina will be without two of their most experienced players, Franck Ribery and German Pezzella, for the clash against Cittadella, but Montella wants to see other members of the squad stepping up in their absence.
“They’re the cornerstones, the heart, the leaders of our team on the pitch,” he said. “All teams have them and it’s difficult to replace them, but they won’t be back for the next game so I need to see the players that have played less taking more responsibility. We have players in the squad that want to show what they can do.”
Montella also gave an update on Federico Chiesa’s fitness, confirming that the Italian is likely to miss out on a place in the squad for the cup match.
“Federico is continuing to work on his recovery,” he said. “He trained separately yesterday and we’ll assess him today. It’s very unlikely he’ll play tomorrow but he has a better chance of returning on Sunday, though we’ll still need to check on his progress each day and see how he responds to the various steps he’ll need to complete to get back available. The rest of the squad is fine except for Franck [Ribery] and probably [Kevin-Prince] Boateng, who we’ll look at today.”
Published: Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:23:00 +0100
Source: Fiorentina Official website en.violachannel.tv