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00:00Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome along to the pre-match press conference on the eve
00:05of Torino against Milan. We'll start with Milan TV. Good afternoon. We always say the
00:13next league match is important. This time, however, can we define this game decisive?
00:21The fact that you need to draw a line under the Champions League and you really can focus
00:25with hunger on our league position, which we really need to improve. It is without doubt
00:33a very important match against a difficult opposition. I think they only lost their last
00:41game against Bologna and they hadn't yet lost in 2025. Historically, it's been a tricky
00:48game against Milan. I saw the last five or six years and there haven't necessarily been
00:52positive results. But between today and tomorrow, we need to focus on what we worked on this
00:57morning in our final training session ahead of this. And that needs to be our approach,
01:05namely that our Champions League final is tomorrow. We need to look at every game as
01:08if it were a Champions League final. Sky, several times you have spoken about the psychological
01:14side of things. And over the last 48 hours, the elimination, Ibra came here to Milanello
01:21from what we've gleaned, Teo also apologised to the team. But you know your players better
01:27than anyone. How are the lads at the moment? Is it difficult or easy to get them to pick
01:33them up again psychologically? Rightly or wrongly in football, after a match, you constantly
01:42wipe the slate clean. You're constantly going again, starting from scratch. You start working
01:48towards your next game that you have to play. Of course, it really did hurt. The day after
01:56our Champions League exit, even yesterday and today, I have noticed that the team and
02:00the squad are really focused on the task at hand in terms of tomorrow's game. It really
02:06did hurt because we knew that we were better. We had prepared the Feyenoord game very well.
02:17It came down to fine margins and big moments in the game. Once I came here and I keep saying
02:22it, football is simple. You need to score goals and not concede them. But within that
02:27simplicity there's also complexity in terms of everything that you need to work on in
02:35order to make football simple in the first place. When a team plays one or two-touch
02:40football, they play it like it's rote, then it looks very simple. But there's so much
02:45hard work that leads up to that in various levels. That's why it's important that we
02:53need to take all of these fine margins, these big moments, and we need to try and develop
02:59every player within what I want to see as part of the team. I start to see very interesting
03:05development. The last game gave me that response. That is what we need to press ahead with in
03:14terms of this development. We need to keep working hard. There isn't any time, and that's
03:20down to us as well, because we could have already been in the round of 16 in the Champions
03:24League. That is the reality of the situation. Now we need to think about the fourth place
03:32in Serie A, which is the minimum to make it into the Champions League places, and the
03:37Coppa Italia where we're in the semi-finals. So the lads look good to me. They looked excellent
03:44in terms of preparing for tomorrow's game against Torino.
03:47Hi Sergio. You said that you appreciate people being very frank, so I'm going to give you
03:55a very direct question. Will Teo Hernandez start tomorrow, or are you going to punish
04:00him because of what happened the other day? Do you need to punish him? Do you not need
04:03to punish him? Will you pick him or not? I do like questions like this in football. Okay,
04:12you know, it's not necessarily the fact that you're saying whether he's starting or not,
04:17you know, not talk about his hair colour and all that. As to whether the players are black,
04:23white or yellow, it doesn't matter, but the most important thing is that they're professionals
04:28and they give the most important thing, they give their utmost for the team. But I spoke
04:32about Teo after the match. Teo is an asset for Milan. He's already given the fans a lot
04:41of joy in the past. He knows that he did something which caused the team a problem.
04:54We've already spoken about that internally within the dressing room environment. And
04:58after that, I make a lot of mistakes myself. I'm not necessarily giving you a direct answer
05:05to your question. But he is a player who's available for selection for tomorrow, just
05:11like the other 22 players. Dazon, good afternoon, Gaffer. When you signed for Milan, when you
05:18came to the club, did you expect to find such a complex situation, not necessarily on a
05:23footballing perspective, but across the board? As you know, you look more, you watch other
05:34leagues as opposed to the Portuguese league, but there's huge pressure in Portugal as well
05:39at every level. And during my playing career, I always had huge pressure as well, because
05:46I played for some top-class clubs. I'm very familiar with Milan's fabulous history. They've
05:52had some great players, coaches, senior management figures down the years, people that worked
05:58on all of the various departments. And I've got huge respect for the club's history and
06:04for all of those individuals. At this moment in time, when you don't win at a club of this
06:10size, then there is a lot more chatter around the place. You are more fragile. And we are
06:19at this club at a different period of time to the glorious periods of the past at every
06:25level. I knew that it would be a difficult place to work on that basis, but I'm here.
06:33I've had, as I've said in the past to the media, I've had so many different options.
06:41I could have gone elsewhere, but I came here. But I have a real affinity with difficult
06:48challenges, so I'm pretty happy with this.
06:50Gazzetta dello Sport. Good afternoon, coach. I'll ask you a question that a number of the
06:56fans are wondering. Joao Felix joined Milan and made a fabulous start, scored against
07:02Roma on his debut, played well against Impoli. But in recent matches, above all in the second
07:06half against Feyenoord, he struggled. Can you explain to the fans why it's important
07:12to keep Joao Felix on the pitch, given that he played 90 minutes against Feyenoord? And
07:16what does he give you that's something different compared with the other players?
07:26You're talking about the fact that I didn't make a substitution in the second half against
07:29Feyenoord. That was an option of mine. I'm the head coach. That's what I'm paid for.
07:35And up until that point, I had made two substitutions, the first two. And we were level on aggregate
07:44in the knockout tie. But based on the way the game looked to me, Santiago Jimenez has
07:54had a few injury niggles over the last few weeks. And I asked him afterwards how he was.
08:03He told me he was absolutely exhausted. So there were two options. I could either put
08:07a striker on for Santi Jimenez, Tammy Abraham, and have a bit more presence up top or a bit
08:12more mobility when we got the ball to be a bit more incisive on the counter. I opted
08:17for the latter situation. And after the game, if you ask me on my way home if I could have
08:25done things differently, you know, we're all great head coaches in hindsight. I win every
08:33game after the fact. That's the way it is.
08:37Good afternoon, Sergio. First and foremost, I wanted to ask you about how the team is
08:48as a whole, because Santiago Jimenez said to me that he had a few issues on Tuesday
08:56evening. Christian Pulisic also has a bit of a knock. Youssef Fofana seems to be fading
09:04in terms of his performance levels compared with how he played in the first half of the
09:09season. All of these details, I don't think Kyle Walker is available for selection tomorrow.
09:17Okay, there you go, he's not available. So all of these injury question marks, does that
09:23mean you're going to have to make a certain team selection? It depends on the individual
09:30situations of all the players that you've just listed there. If you're asking me if
09:34Christian Pulisic has 90 minutes under his belt, he doesn't at this moment in time. Santi
09:41gets better with every passing day, but he's not yet 100% as we'd like to see him and we
09:46are working on that. Because in terms of the way I want to play football, the players need
09:52to be fighting fit physically. They need to have that right approach and the desire
10:02to show that intensity throughout 90 minutes. And when I joined the club, the players were
10:08struggling and there were a number of injured players. If you remember when we went to Saudi
10:13Arabia for the Super Cup, some players haven't necessarily even come back yet from injury,
10:20like Ruben Loftus-Cheek, for instance. I'm talking about Loftus-Cheek. And the same has
10:28come to pass now to Kyle Walker. If you play every three days, I've been here for six weeks
10:35and I'm talking about the time that I've been at the club, my experience here at Milan,
10:40playing every three days and when there are always crucial matches, both for myself and
10:48for them, as you know, if you draw a game here at Milan, you drop points. You can't
10:57win every single match. So we're constantly walking a tight rope and it's not easy to
11:06manage the squad. And as I said to the Gazetta journalist earlier, when you're managing the
11:17players and when you're working internally and you're familiar with how all of the players are,
11:22and some people actually on the outside might think it's the right decision, but that's what
11:27my job is and I have to do my job to the best of my powers. Good afternoon. I'd like to come back
11:33to what Cardlo was asking in terms of the players' fitness levels and Torino that have always caused
11:39Milan problems in terms of physicality and intensity. What sort of match are you expecting
11:44and what have you made of Torino? I'm sure you've watched Torino many times over the last
11:49couple of days. No, that's exactly the sort of game I expect. A difficult match, a very intense
11:55fixture because there are many times when they have the ball with their goalkeeper or their
12:05centre-backs and they try and play route one, direct football up towards the centre-forward.
12:09They've got some quick players in the final third. They've got some very exciting midfielders like
12:15Samuel Ericci, for instance, players that operate with a lot of intensity
12:24and they cause problems for the opposition. If we're not as aggressive and as intense as them,
12:30we can have issues. Typically, Torino is a tough place to go to.
12:35In terms of the way that they approach every game, Torino look like they always want to try
12:43and get a positive result within the scope of those qualities I've just listed. So,
12:48we need to be at the top of our game all across the board. I'm talking about aggressiveness,
12:58focus in terms of when the opposition counter because Torino are also very good in transition.
13:05They're a side that, if you look back,
13:12they haven't necessarily won a lot of matches over the last 10 games but they've barely lost
13:18either. So, it will be a tough game. We're Milan and we need to grab the game by the
13:25scruff of the neck and take the game the way we want it to go.
13:29Sport Italia.
13:33Good afternoon. A question about you as a person. You're someone who right from day one has been
13:41very open and honest. You've been very frank and in general, in terms of the way you want to be,
13:48you've always encountered difficult times and transformed them into something positive. You've
13:56always come through those. Milan are really struggling. We were saying a lot in the papers
14:03in six months' time. Konstantin Salah is leaving. He's got the substitutions wrong. This player
14:07needs to go. Is your real challenge over the next three months to turn all of this negativity into
14:14positivity and make your targets reach your goals? I'm not someone who necessarily does a lot of
14:24permutations. I don't really want to look ahead to the end of this season. I have a huge amount
14:30of intensity in the way I do things day in, day out. Six, seven, eight, nine hours. I take my
14:36computer home with me and I work from home. My family aren't particularly happy. My youngest son
14:42and my wife aren't overly pleased with that but it's football. I have to work. That's the way I
14:46am and I'm very passionate. I don't necessarily always get things right. That's not what I'm
14:51saying but I'm very passionate. My staff and I work very hard to try and succeed.
15:00These days I thought a lot about our training session that I prepared last night and at 11am
15:05we went out onto the pitch. In terms of the clips the players need to see, they need to
15:10be in line with what we've been coaching and training. That's my job. That's my challenge.
15:14That's what I'm concerned about day in, day out. I want to give 100% of myself on a daily basis.
15:20I was afraid when I was a kid but today, the 21st of February, it's 31 years since my mother died
15:29and that was a very tough time because I was 18 years old and that was two years
15:34after I lost my father. Those are the issues. These days I've got absolutely no fear of
15:42anything. I'm not afraid of anything in life so I'm going to press ahead with what I want to do
15:47even though I know that there are a number of ordinary folk talking about things. We've spoken
15:55about the pressure that comes with a big club like Milan but I'm pressing ahead with what I want to
16:00do. I'm very focused on the job at hand. Good afternoon coach. Your predecessor often used the
16:08Portuguese word liderança, leadership. We've learned that Teo apologised to the squad that
16:15Ibrahimovic has spoken to the squad. Has the team also spoken to one another? Did the players
16:24actually raise their voices and get a few things off their chest? I'm sure that you want the team
16:28to also deal with things themselves, no? Internally? Yes, I do like it when things are that way.
16:37I think you're better off saying what you think because you're actually a true friend if you
16:44tell your teammate the truth. If you don't say anything or if you think
16:48one thing and then say something else then that's not great.
16:55So they need to be truthful with one another
17:00and I'm happy about that that the squad are also developing from that perspective as well
17:05because if they have someone in front of them and they say the right things when they look
17:11them in their eye and when things are going well and you give them compliments in the same way when
17:15things aren't going well you need to understand what you got wrong. All of us need to do that,
17:20myself included and my staff. That goes for them too. You need to tell the truth and move forward.
17:25They know me, they know what it's like. I'd rather hear a harsh truth than maybe some nice
17:34compliments hiding a very difficult situation. I like your question slash answer because that's
17:39ultimately what I want to see. Calciomercato, good afternoon coach. Six weeks ago. Calciomercato,
17:47you're the one that's always saying he's ready, his suitcase is packed. No, I'm joking.
17:58A month and a half ago when you took charge of Milan you said that you'd already pinpointed
18:03what the potential issues could have been. You didn't start the season so you couldn't plan
18:07things physically even though you did have the January transfer window. A month and a half on
18:14regardless of any positive or negative results. Do you have a clear idea, have you pinpointed
18:20the ideas in terms of issues that the team looks great against top class
18:30opposition but they're not able to necessarily show consistency on the easier games on paper?
18:36Yes, I have pinpointed that. We've spoken about that, we talk about it on a daily basis with the
18:40squad and we're working on the things that I think are essential in order to
18:44have success with the team. Is that answer too short for you?
18:52No, because otherwise I'll get into the specificities and you'll know too much.
18:58I want to take a step back and talk about the positives about Feyenoord the first 50 minutes of the match
19:08when you really pushed the opposition back in their own half and they couldn't cross the halfway line.
19:14Is that what we should expect in every game or was that a specific situation because you
19:20were trailing 1-0 from the first leg, the opposition could afford to do so if you will?
19:28And is it once again a case of those front four can play together because you perform well?
19:36Yes, that's exactly what I want to see from the team
19:41and I think we are developing on that score, we're evolving positively, we're not necessarily
19:47at the peak of our powers. I think we're doing a lot better than we were and that makes me very
19:53confident to get even better going forward in terms of winning the ball back more aggressively,
20:01not allowing the opposition to get near our goal. Of course the opposition will occasionally get
20:08close to our goal but even in previous matches we have worked on that and I like the team and I
20:19think this is same for head coaches, I like to see the team very tight and compact between the
20:25lines and high up the pitch. I think we have a team that can play in this way, albeit we need
20:34to make sure we have the right balance because that's what we're talking about, striking balance,
20:40getting the right shape, knowing when to press the opposition high but also knowing that we have to
20:47defend the goal and we don't want to afford them too much space, so it's all linked together,
20:54both the attacking and offensive phase and vice versa. Thanks very much everyone.