Coppa Italia Exit Won’t Help Napoli In The Serie A – Conte

Napoli manager Antonio Conte has blasted the standard of refereeing in the Serie A. He recently slammed his own team’s absurd injury crisis following the club’s elimination from the Coppa Italia.

According to him, the fact that coaches, players and supporters keep complaining about officiating in Italy is enough proof that the referees and VAR must step up their game for the remainder of the season.

Conte added that elimination against Como will not help Napoli focus on closing the nine-point gap to Inter in Serie A because of the team’s injury worries.

His words, “It’s certainly not a good season for referees and for VAR, I hope they can find something that will improve the situation.

The fact is, everyone is complaining, coaches, players and fans, so the sport needs to step up and improve, because just as we improve our teams, Rocchi has to improve his referees and VAR officials. It’s not good for football, it’s not good for us.

What an absurd question. How can you predict Di Lorenzo’s injury, or Lukaku with a detached tendon, De Bruyne with damage to a tendon in a leg he already had an operation on, or Gilmour who needs surgery and spends months out. How can you predict that?

What we can do is go to a shrine and pray, because these are injuries that last for the whole season. With six or seven important players out for months at a time, it forces the same ones to keep playing all the time, so that creates problems for [Scott] McTominay and [Amir] Rrahmani. I don’t think this sort of thing has ever happened to another club.

I can only praise these players, because we are pushing beyond our current potential. We have very few resources available, which are simply nowhere near the ambitions that we should’ve had for this season. Despite that, the lads are doing remarkably well… considering the squad at our disposal right now, any coach would struggle.”

WOW.