Simone Inzaghi was left to bitterly regret Inter Milan 's first-leg result after they were narrowly knocked out of the Champions League by Liverpool.
Inter claimed a 1-0 win in Tuesday's second leg, becoming the first team beat Liverpool since the turn of the year, but a toothless 2-0 loss at the San Siro three weeks ago saw Jurgen Klopp 's side through to the quarter-finals on aggregate.
Despite a pair of "tremendous performances," Inzaghi and co's European dream ended at Anfield and the Nerazzurri boss reckons the damage was done long before their consolation victory on Merseyside.
"We have got to this stage for the first time in 11 years and ended up perhaps playing the strongest team in Europe and we were their equals," Inzaghi said post-match.
"We put in two tremendous performances, and in the San Siro we probably played even better than this evening.
Join the debate! How far will Liverpool go in the Champions League? Give us your prediction here.
"We played an extremely tough, physical, technical team that can put you in all sorts of trouble and we did really well.
"I'm more bitter about what happened in the San Siro rather than tonight. I regret that result."
Inter, toothless in the first leg, looked to be in the ascendancy in round two after Lautaro Martinez's rocket made it 2-1 on aggregate shortly after the hour mark.
But their hopes of reaching the last eight would be dealt a fatal blow in a matter of seconds as forward Alexis Sanchez received a second yellow card for a foul on Fabinho.
Ex- Manchester United flop Sanchez picked up his first booking for poorly-timed challenge on Thiago Alcantara just before half-time, although the Nerazzurri were furious with referee Antonio Mateu's decision.
"Sometimes it needs just a single episode to change the course of a game," Inzaghi admitted. "We played a great a game for 75 minutes at San Siro then conceded from a set-piece.
"In the first half from set-pieces they created issues, and in the second half we began to get the upper hand and scored a goal and unfortunately Sanchez got sent off.
"I haven't really looked at it in any great detail so it's difficult to comment on it
"We feel upset about the fact we had a player sent off just when we were getting the upper hand in the game."
Klopp, however, believes Liverpool deserved to advance and declared: "I'm really happy we went through because when we saw the draw in the first place we thought 'okay, that's a tough one'.
"The goal was conceded we shouldn’t have conceded even though the finish was brilliant, we could have done differently before then.
"Over the two legs we deserved it. That's fine. We had some problem in the game for different reasons, one is the quality of the opponent, a really good football team."
