Di Francesco reflects on Real Madrid defeat

The Giallorossi ended their 2018 International Champions Cup campaign with a 2-1 loss against the reigning Champions League winners at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium – bringing to a close a tournament that saw them lose to Tottenham and beat Barcelona.

Speaking afterwards, Di Francesco insisted that his side had done plenty well in their final pre-season contest – despite what the scoreline and statistics might suggest.

“These games are important to put into practice what we do in training,” Di Francesco said. “The statistics do not reflect what we did on the pitch, in both halves we could have made more of a few situations.

“There are a lot of things we can improve on. We were playing a great team, perhaps the best in the world, and perhaps we could have done better with some of our defending – especially at the beginning.”

He added: “I think my team is not quite at 100%. But that’s fine – it’s the start of the season that counts. We have been working hard, the workload has been tough for a few weeks and that has had an impact on the legs. It has been a long tour, a lot of travelling involved, and the choices we have made have been done with the idea of getting everyone at 100% in time for the first game of the season.”

Asked to reflect on the tour as a whole, the boss was content.

“I think that a good approach to all the games, even against Tottenham,” he noted. “Tonight we started well today and then made a big mistake, and this allowed Real to play on the counter-attack a bit more. In the first half we won the ball back a lot high and created some chances. As for our fitness, perhaps we were not brilliant but that is normal at this stage of pre-season.”

With plenty of substitutions made once again on the night, the coach was asked about a number of his possible selection decisions for the first game of the season – including whether the likes of Ivan Marcano, Rick Karsdorp, Robin Olsen and Justin Kluivert will be considered for starting rolls.

“I want to make it clear that I know perfectly well which ones will be the starter for certain games, but you can’t just have one player when you have so many games over the course of the season,” Di Francesco stated. “This goes for all the positions.

“For example there is Kluivert, who really has talent but will also clearly need some time to adjust to the new system and the new surroundings. But I really hope that I will have 22 or 23 players that I can fully count on over the course of the season.”