Leao admits Milan were ‘not mentally focused’ but ‘deserved’ to beat Red Star | OneFootball

Rafael Leao believes that AC Milan made life difficult for themselves against Red Star, but they ultimately emerged as deserved winners.

It was far from a vintage performance from Milan as they were made to fight incredibly hard for all three points against Red Star, a team that Inter beat 4-0 earlier in the league phase.

Things were on the right track when Leao brought down a ball over the top from Youssouf Fofana and finished brilliantly, but then the ex-Torino man Radonjic equalised in the second half.

Tammy Abraham was the hero late on in the game, pouncing on a loose ball after Francesco Camarda’s back-peddling header was tipped onto the ball to fire into a virtually unguarded net.

Leao spoke to Milan TV after the full-time whistle to give his thoughts on what was a difficult night but a winning one, and his quotes come via MilanNews.

The goal came from that connection with Fofana…

“He’s a very important player. He’s a player I get along with very well. Then that’s a movement that he knows, he knows that when I have an open field I make that movement.

“The ball is perfect, I just had to control it well and then shoot immediately when the goalkeeper arrived. Yes, I’m happy. The most important thing was the victory, difficult, but in the end we deserved it.”

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Did you expect such a difficult match?

“Yes, yes. The coach had already spoken about them during the week, describing them as a team that waits for the counter-attack, waiting for us to make a bad pass in the middle, because they all defend together.

“There is a low block, there is no space in the middle, so they always tried to counter-attack to create danger and they scored like that. Then in the second half we were not mentally focused, we were not in the game.

“But I also have to compliment us, because we did not stop, we continued to fight, to look for the goal, and in the end it came.”

How possible is it to get into the top eight?

“We have in mind that the next two games will not be easy. Today we made life a bit complicated for ourselves. It is an objective, obviously the whole team wants to get back into the best in Europe. So we will have to start strong in the upcoming games and make it clear that Milan wants to win.”