Italian agent Mario Giuffredi, who represents Napoli trio Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Matteo Politano, and Mario Rui, is no stranger to criticizing coaches, having lashed out at Luciano Spalletti towards the end of last season. He has now turned his guns towards Rudi Garcia for not giving Mario Rui enough game time, as the fullback registered his 400th club career appearance against Real Madrid.
The Portuguese left-back has played just 233 minutes so far across all competitions and appeared in the dying minutes against Real Madrid, prompting Guiffredi to denounce Garcia’s choices in an interview to Radio CRC (via Tuttomercatoweb).
“Mario Rui playing two minutes last night? I define Garcia’s management of Mario Rui as disrespectful and unfortunate. Disrespectful because we are talking about a player who has been one of the best left backs in Serie A in the last two years and was fundamental to Luciano Spalletti’s game, and he shouldn’t be treated like that.”
“There are two things: Mario Rui is not good for Garcia’s game who perhaps doesn’t want to build the action from the back or I have to think that Garcia, having been in Saudi Arabia, doesn’t know Mario Rui as a footballer. I consider it unfortunate because if Mario Rui gives a great performance against Udinese and then isn’t given continuity, it means that you don’t want to recover this player.”
The representative pointed to how well the wingback combined with Khvicha Kvaratskhelia last season.
“Look at Kvaratskhelia’s performance when Mario Rui is on the pitch. Kvaratskhelia increases his level with a ball handler next to him. Maybe the coach makes other choices by wanting a fullback with different traits, but he could have stated that earlier. It’s disrespectful because Mario Rui has been one of the best in his role in recent years, I have no words. Then there are tactical choices that I don’t want to go into, because you’d have to understand what the coach has in mind. The boss will have his own reasons for doing this type of choices.”
The 32-year-old Sporting Lisbon youth product proved to be consistent the previous season under Spalletti, but he has been forced to sit on the sidelines for much of this campaign.
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