Ranieri: “We need to be more ambitious than that”

Claudio Ranieri called for his Sampdoria team to be more ambitious after they were held to a 1-1 draw by Benevento on Sunday lunchtime.

“It’s always good to get a point when you can’t get three,” began the Samp coach after the game. “We risked conceding a hatful. Thankfully for us, Audero did very well. It’s a shame because we played pretty well in the first half, although I wouldn’t have liked to see a bit more impetus. We did a good job of shutting down their incursions and we were dominating the game, even if we didn’t get forward the way I wanted.”

Ranieri singled out the performance at the start of the second half as the main reason for his disappointment.

“We didn’t turn up for the second half, at least not until the final 15 minutes,” he said. “That was the only time we played the way I want. We need to be ambitious. The fact that I’m here – at my age – is because I still want to compete and have fun. That’s what I want from my players. I don’t care about who the opposition are – we need to perform well in every game. I want to see that implemented on the pitch. These guys are amazing in training, but we have to reproduce that at the weekend and fight for every ball – that’s it.”