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Hellas Verona Sporting Director Sean Sogliano spoke at a press conference following the match against Empoli, which was lost 4-1 at the Bentegodi.

Verona falls at home 4-1 against Empoli with all goals in the first half by Esposito (brace), Cacace, Tengstedt, and Colombo. The Venetians remain at 12 points and risk being overtaken by Como and Monza, who are yet to play and are respectively one and two points away. On the other hand, Empoli, with 19 points, jumps to ninth place in the standings, leading Udinese by +2, who will face the Brianza team tomorrow evening.

Verona-Empoli 1-4, Sogliano’s post-match comments

Verona’s DS Sean Sogliano spoke at a press conference in place of coach Paolo Zanetti: “Why me? We talked and decided that I would come, there’s no point in hiding, something is not right and there will be reflections, today we will not make any final decisions but we will take 24-48 hours.”

“Evidently, on the field, we are not able to find the right performances, partly it’s the fault of the coach, partly of the players but today we expected a completely different performance, then there may be a day when a team is unplayable and bad luck also played a part because on the first goal, if we try it 100 more times, we won’t succeed, but beyond that, we need to analyze deeply what is happening.”

Players’ difficulties
“We need to dig deeper and this is not the right place, then if we look at the defense, four out of five players are the same as last year. Then the players who no one knows where they came from last year saved us, Noslin came from the pizzeria and I’m happy for him. We need to delve into the details.”

Individual performances
“It’s still early to reach the market, we need to understand why we are delivering these performances. In Cagliari, there was a reaction, but today after the first goal, the team fell apart, it was long in the departments, without taking anything away from Empoli who can win not only against Verona at the moment, this week I saw the boys training well but then at the first difficulty, they crumbled.”

Verona’s Ondrej Duda portrait in action during Italian soccer Serie A match Hellas Verona FC vs SSC Napoli at the Marcantonio Bentegodi stadium in Verona, Italy, August 18, 2024 – Credit: Ettore Griffoni

Could the possible sale of the club influence?
“I don’t think changing the coach will have much influence, we can bring in a coach who accepts Verona’s conditions. And I haven’t decided yet, I’ve already told the president, we can change or not, but we don’t change in a minute, this must be clear. It’s evident that something is wrong, then today Duda was missing, Serdar woke up with a fever, it’s a 360-degree bad moment but the team can’t exit so early from a direct clash.”

About Bocchetti
“I have already worked with Bocchetti and I would have been the first to want to keep him, then we took Baroni to start in a different way, but before Bocchetti, there is the decision about Zanetti, he is an intelligent person and knows that something is wrong.”

Is the team’s problem more mental than technical?
“I think there is a big mental limit, it’s a difficult team to analyze, of course, there are also technical limitations but everyone has those, it beats Roma, Napoli, and then in many matches, it completely disconnects. We will try to find a solution because things are not going well like this.”