Conte: This draw hurts me, and it must hurt the players too

Last night, in the seventh round of the Champions League, Napoli drew away with Copenhagen (1:1), and the coach of the Italian champions, Antonio Conte, was very disappointed.

Napoli has been struggling lately, winning once and drawing four times in five games in all competitions.

"We have to be disappointed. We had all the conditions to win to reach the playoffs. We can find a thousand excuses, but none of them are valid, because everything happened in such a way that we had to win. But we have shown for the fourth game that we are struggling. We had total control, 11 against 10, we were just 10 players short and we were tired - you have to win these kinds of games. You simply have to," said a disappointed Conte after the game.

Napoli took the lead with a goal from McTominay, and Larson equalized. The Neapolitans played with a player more from the 35th minute.

"It's obvious that our current level is not enough for this competition. We only have eight points in the Champions League, we all have to accept the blame, to take it home. We have to be angry with ourselves, because this was a golden opportunity, maybe we didn't understand what was at stake. It's like we were riding a bicycle downhill, and then somehow we managed to make it go uphill... We ruined everything."

Napoli welcomes Juventus in the Serie A derby on Sunday (18).

"It's the end of January, we'll do our best with the players we have available. We're starting preparations for Juve, we'll see if we have 11 or 12 players available. But we had to win this, end of story," Conte was clear.

Napoli welcomes Chelsea in the final round of the Champions League next Wednesday and only needs a win to be among the 24 teams in the standings.

"I told the team at half-time that we had the game in hand, that it was important to score the second and third goals. This should have bothered us, because if it bothered us it would mean that we did not want to grow and progress. It is impossible that we allowed Copenhagen to come back with 10 men, we had to understand the importance of the match. You have to be fired up and hungry from the first to the last minute, otherwise you risk things like this. This draw hurts me. And it must hurt my players too," concluded Conte.