Ranieri: We came here and tried our best to win

Here's what Claudio Ranieri had to say on Saturday night, in the wake of Roma's 1-1 draw with Inter Milan.

The Giallorossi took any early lead at the Giuseppe Meazza through Stephan El Shaarawy, but Ivan Perisic's second half header ensured the points ended up being shared.

Could you have capitalised on your chances more?

“We came here to try to win, which is what I like to see from my teams. We could have capitalised more and counter-attacked better in the second half. We were too flat at times and Inter did well to stop us from breaking. We can live with coming here to San Siro and getting a point while trying to win right until the end.”

Did you perhaps run out of energy in the second half?

“Inter are one of the teams that have scored the most goals in the last 15 minutes. We responded as well as we could. I’m not sure if we ran out of energy, I’ll chat with the lads. I asked them to play without fear and show that we’re still up for it.”

What happened with Ivan Perisic’s goal?

“We’ve spoken about it. Matias Vecino was the guy who kept joining in the front line and a midfielder should have always been tracking him. Unfortunately that didn’t happen.”

Roma seem surer of themselves. What’s happened?

“I require that the guys play as a team. If we can find the strength, we’ve got quality in abundance. We’ve got talented players on the wings. I changed things after a few minutes: I had Lorenzo Pellegrini behind Edin Dzeko, but they were causing us problems between the lines, so I preferred to drop deeper and play with a 4-3-3.”

What differences are there between the football you’ve experienced abroad and here in Italy?

“I think the psychological pressure inhibits our players and coaches. There’s a lot less tactics abroad, but when they step out onto the pitch they run harder. That’s their secret: constantly training and playing at full pelt.

"I’ll give you an example: when I won the Premier League, the majority of my players didn’t actually live in Leicester and so every day had to do a lot of mileage, some from London and some from Manchester. Think what would happen with a similar situation here in Italy. They have a lot less psychological stress; you play the game and everything else doesn’t weigh on you as much.”