Conte comments on Lukaku and Ibrahimovic's clash in the Coppa Italia

Antonio Conte says he was not surprised to see Romelu Lukaku and Zlatan Ibrahimovic clash at San Siro on Tuesday night.

Antonio Conte expected tensions to run high after Lukaku and Ibrahimovic clashed heads in the Coppa Italia.

Inter claimed a 2-1 comeback win against their rivals as a goal from Lukaku and a stoppage-time winner by Eriksen cancelled out Ibrahimovic’s first half opener.

The game was overshadowed by the brawl at half-time between Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Romelu Lukaku, in which the former Manchester United teammates exchanged harsh words and had to be physically kept apart.

Lukaku and Ibrahimovic are choosing to cuss other out in English so you know it's real… pic.twitter.com/XwNTWUgHOE
— Carl Anka (@Ankaman616) January 26, 2021

It was the first time Lukaku had been caught up in such a situation since his move to Inter Milan. Antonio Conte was not all that surprised and is well familiar with the sort of tension these kinds of derbies bring.

“To be honest, I’ve been a player, so I know that during a game tempers can flare and situations occur when you get angry.” the Inter boss said to Sky Sport Italia.

“The important thing is to keep it in the right dimension.”

“It was good to see Romelu so concentrated and focused. Ibra has the determination of a winner, a warrior, and I think Romelu is growing in that aspect. I can only be happy to see him fired up.”

Zlatan Ibrahimovic saw red for AC Milan in the 58th minute but Conte insists his side would have won the game even with the big Swede on the pitch for 90 minutes.

2015 – Zlatan #Ibrahimovic has received a red card in a game played in Europe for the first time since March 2015 (Chelsea-PSG). Unwary.#InterMilan
— OptaPaolo (@OptaPaolo) January 26, 2021

“We are in the semi-final, the second year in a row we’ve made it here, so the players deserve credit for having the right approach from start to finish” he added.

“It was a tough game, Milan are a strong team who are top of the table, so eliminating them in the quarter-finals is something to be happy about.”

“Milan have a lot of quality too, but even 11 against 11 we had the chances to turn it around. I thought the result until the winner wasn’t fair. We took the initiative throughout, their goalkeeper was Man of the Match.”

“Again tonight, though, we have to reflect on this tendency to create so much and not convert enough chances. We need to be more determined in front of goal and we cannot continue to do this, or we do end up not winning games we deserve.”