Napoli coach Luciano Spalletti defended his players after their Europa League defeat by Spartak Moscow.

Napoli lost 3-2 as Spalletti was booked at the final whistle for having words with members of the Spartak staff.

“Nothing happened…" shrugged Spalletti on Sky Italia.

“I simply went to salute one of the Spartak collaborators, because he mocked us for the entire second half. I just wanted to shake his hand.

“When you sit too deep, it becomes difficult to get back out, and we struggled. We moved to 5-3-1 and were suffering less, but we allowed one of their strikers to break and that's when they made it 2-1.

“After Spartak also had a man sent off, we genuinely believed we could get it back on level terms, but instead we were too frantic. If we had remained calm, we would've equalised. Instead, they got a third goal.

“We can improve some things, and I expected to do better in the final 15 minutes, but we weren't organised enough."

Mario Rui saw red for Napoli and Spalletti added: “We didn't do well after going down to 10 men. It's a game we can lose, there were some decisive incidents. If not for those four or five cynical fouls to stop our counter-attacks, we could've really hurt them, but we showed a lack of experience."