Italiano fury at Bologna ‘non-performance’ in painful 3-1 defeat to Inter

BOLOGNA, ITALY – DECEMBER 28: Vincenzo Italiano head coach of Bologna FC during the Serie A match between Bologna FC 1909 and US Sassuolo Calcio at Renato Dall’Ara Stadium on December 28, 2025 in Bologna, Italy. (Photo by Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)

Vincenzo Italiano warns Bologna were punished for a ‘non-performance’ against Inter and ‘cannot have lost everything in the space of 23 days.’

The Rossoblu had beaten these opponents on December 19 in the Supercoppa Italiana semi-final in Riyadh, winning the penalty shoot-out following a 1-1 draw.

However, they were under siege at San Siro, with Federico Ravaglia keeping the scoreline down, but unable to keep out Piotr Zielinski, Lautaro Martinez and Marcus Thuram efforts.

Santiago Castro came sliding onto the Charalampos Lykogiannis cross late on to at least get one back.

Italiano lashes out at sluggish Bologna

“We were below par in every sense this evening, and Inter made the most of our non-performance,” confessed Italiano to DAZN Italia.

“We’ve got to do more, because just a few weeks ago I felt really good, a coach with great enthusiasm who saw the right things in every session, but we cannot just lose all of that in the space of 23 days.

“We’ve got to recover what allowed us to become what we are. You can lose to Inter, but not when opening the doors wide open for them to just waltz through.

“Everything went wrong today, we didn’t win a single duel, we never got to the rebound first, and Inter’s quality dominated us.”

Bologna have really hit problems in Serie A recently, scraping just two points from the last five rounds.

They’ve slipped down to seventh place, now four points adrift of Como, and the midweek round will be a head-to-head for position with Atalanta.

“We cannot have lost everything in three weeks,” continued a visibly frustrated Italiano.

“It was the first game where we just didn’t turn up from start to finish. Now we’ve got to get our heads down and work hard, to rediscover the atmosphere and attitude that we had. Perhaps we thought ourselves a bit too pretty and got complacent.

“Bologna used to have one of the best defensive records, but in the last three or four games we really lacked focus. We need to be less superficial, we’ve got to all step up a gear, including me.

“We can’t waste all that we built. There isn’t much time, as we’ve already got another game coming up on Wednesday.”

Riccardo Orsolini was only fit for the bench due to a knock in training, with Federico Bernardeschi and Lukasz Skoruspki still out of action.

Remo Freuler came on as a substitute, but he too is struggling after surgery on a fractured clavicle.