\nROME, 8 Feb: Zlatan Ibrahimovic is like a caged lion as he fights to regain fitness, but the Swede will be unavailable for AC Milan’s Italian Cup quarterfinal against Lazio, coach Stefano Pioli said on Tuesday.
\nThe 40-year-old striker, Milan’s joint-top scorer this season with eight goals, has a damaged Achilles tendon and missed Saturday\u2019s 2-1 Milan derby victory over league leader Inter.
\n“Zlatan is a caged lion. He is motivated to help the team on the pitch. He is doing everything to recover, he won\u2019t be ready for tomorrow but we will see about the next games,\u201d Pioli told Sport Mediaset.
\nOlivier Giroud started in Ibrahimovic\u2019s place against Inter and was the hero, scoring twice in three second-half minutes to complete a surprise comeback and silence his detractors. “The critics are always there, what counts is the faith that we have in him,” Pioli said.
\n“He is showing that he is the player who we bought, a valuable player and person who is giving a great contribution to the team.”
\nMilan hasn\u2019t won the Italian Cup since 2003 and is involved in a fierce Serie A title race, sitting one point behind leader Inter.
\n“The concrete objective is to eliminate Lazio tomorrow. That will be a difficult obstacle, they are in good form and won a great match against Fiorentina on Saturday. We will focus on tomorrow\u2019s match and then go one step at a time,” Pioli said. (Agencies)<\/p>\n
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ROME, 8 Feb: Zlatan Ibrahimovic is like a caged lion as he fights to regain fitness, but the Swede will be unavailable for AC Milan’s Italian Cup quarterfinal against Lazio, coach Stefano Pioli said on Tuesday. The 40-year-old striker, Milan’s joint-top scorer this season with eight goals, has a damaged Achilles tendon and missed Saturday\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-183773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}