AC Milan boss Stefano Pioli believes that his side will take ‘great strength’ from losing against Spezia in such controversial circumstances ahead of two huge games at San Siro.

After Rafael Leao had given Milan the lead and Kevin Agudelo responded for the away side, the game descended into farce in added time at the end of the 90 minutes. Junior Messias curled a shot into the top corner that was not allowed to stand as referee Marco Serra had whistled prematurely for a foul on Ante Rebic thus negating a fair advantage, with Emmanuel Gyasi scoring a winner in the dying seconds to add insult to injury.

Pioli spole to Milan TV after the defeat against Spezia at San Siro, with his words relayed by MilanNews.

“Losing a match like this must give us great strength to react. We pay dearly for our mistakes in both phases, but then there are other responsibilities as well. It’s a real shame,” he said.

On the referee: “He made a mistake, he noticed immediately and he also apologised. Unfortunately it went like this. He made a serious mistake, he even admitted it. Unfortunately it is a bad evening, everything went wrong. However, he needs the energy to react immediately.”

On the match: “We lost composure after the decisive episode of the match. There was a desire to win the match, but that episode sent us into confusion. We made a mistake on the second goal, it is evident, we all lost our attention.”

On Krunic and Bakayoko: “All in all we had a good balance. In the second half we conceded something in the defensive phase. But it is too little to have scored a single goal with what we created.”

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