"You have to play with personality and character." Coach Pagliuca analyzes the Entella post-match.

By Simone Cioni, EMPOLI: Despite the negative result, the test against their peers, Virtus Entella, highlighted that coach Pagliuca still has a lot of work to do. This is more than justified at the dawn of a season full of changes. Commenting on this latest outing, the Italian coach therefore holds on to the good things he's done, aware of where there is room for improvement.

"We played against a team coming off a championship victory, a team that, for the most part, is intact and ahead of us in many aspects," he began. "So we're getting a great training session that helps us grow and allows us to take a small but important step in assessing certain situations. Sometimes, if you get a balanced result, which we could have achieved because no one team was more difficult for the other," he continued, "it's normal that it makes you smile a little more, but we have to be good at taking the positives and improving what went wrong, analyzing the game from all angles." There were three aspects that didn't entirely convince Pagliuca.

"Focus, like in the situation of the second goal, which we could have easily avoided," he explained, "then personality. We should have had more of it in the duels and in finding a player with a little more time and space because he was there. Finally, character, because it's true that they are friendlies, but the mentality is built from that. When we step out on the pitch, we have to have fun, but we also needed to win more tackles and get to second balls first, because these are important details both in a match and in our own development. But it's also true that it was the first, most challenging match for a very young group, and we need to take the positives and improve the negatives. Improving them is up to me and my staff, but for a start, I'm happy with all the guys; there's a lot of room for improvement."

Meanwhile, Guarino, who left the field at halftime with a groin strain, is unlikely to be serious, but he joins the injured Ilie (calf problem) and Konatè (sprained ankle), as well as the long-term recoveries. The two new arrivals, Curto and Moruzzi, made their debuts on Saturday. "I didn't want to use them so much, but given that we were facing an almost full-strength team," Pagliuca concluded, "and further reducing the age of the squad in an already challenging situation would have risked making things even more difficult for the players. So I asked them to lend us a hand, and I was completely available."