Carlo Ancelotti Has 'No Regrets' Despite Napoli's Champions League Exit After Liverpool Defeat
Napoli boss Carlo Ancelotti has pledged to use the 'disappointment' from their Champions League elimination in the Europa League, as he insisted he has no regrets about his side's performance in the group stages.
Napoli put in a surprisingly lacklustre performance as they fell to a 1-0 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield, in what was a make or break night on Tuesday.
The result means that Ancelotti's side have failed to progress to the knockout stages of Europe's top competition and will drop into the Europa League, with the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal.
Ancelotti told Sky Sports (as quoted by CalcioMercato): “We need to accept the verdict, we are so sorry. We had the chances to go through but we didn’t do anything different from the expectations.
"We were close and we are embittered now. But we’ll take this disappointment into the Europa League even though it’s less important than the Champions League.”
Despite the poor performance, Ancelotti maintained he had no regrets after the loss to Liverpool.
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He explained: “I thought Liverpool would score two goals if they had to score two. The thing is, we had to score one goal. I have no regrets.
"Di Maria scored against us in the final minutes but we also scored in the stoppage time against Liverpool. We did what we had to, we fought until the very last minute of the group stage and that’s already a kind of win."
Needing only a point to progress, substitute Arkadiusz Milik had a golden opportunity to equalise and send Napoli into the last 16 when the ball dropped to him in the 92nd minute. However, the Polish striker's effort was saved miraculously by Alisson.
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Speaking about the heart-wrenching incident, Ancelotti said: "He stopped the ball very well, there is nothing I can tell my guys, they did everything I wanted. Honestly, we did all we could. We are sorry and motivated, we’ll use this motivation in Europa League.”
