Napoli manager Luciano Spalletti has explained the decision to leave Manchester United loanee Axel Tuanzebe out of their Europa League squad.
The Reds defender cut short his loan at Aston Villa after Steven Gerrard's arrival forced him to minimal appearances off the bench.
Spalletti's side will face European giants Barcelona in the knockout play-off round for a place in the last016 stage of the competition but opted for Faouzi Ghoulam instead of the Englishman after originally excluding the Algerian due to his injury problems.
Speaking ahead of their win over Venezia on Sunday, he said via Football Italia : “I explain it badly, but then you have to explain to me the exclusion of another to include him.
"The moment you never want to be a coach is when you call a player in the office to tell him why he doesn’t make the tournament.
“At Inter [when I was in charge], I told 3-4 because there was a reduced UEFA list, there it was a massacre, you create a group of excluded players but they are calculations.
"In this case, Manolas goes out and Ghoulam comes in, he was injured, they are evaluations, the left-back is missing, there are three centre-backs with the return of Koulibaly.
“Up front the strength has to be maintained if you want to get ahead.
"We are getting to know each other, now he has to take care of his back but he immediately joined the group, he can already speak a bit of Italian, in training, he is very good and he helps us with the counters, we thank him.”
Since arriving in Italy, Tuanzebe has managed just two appearances and sat out of the latest win with a back injury.
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