Max Allegri calls Leonardo Bonucci “an extraordinary player” and the future leader of the Juventus dressing room.”
The tactician spoke of the falling out between the two and the reasons for excluding Bonucci for the Champions League match against Porto last season.
“At that particular moment it was the right thing to do,” Allegri told Sky.
“There are times when you should turn a blind eye and times when you have to have your eyes wide open and in that moment Leo was wrong.
“I was wrong too, and in fact I punished myself and Leo was left out. It was an important and decisive game and even if we’d lost we’d have had the strength to win 10 more.
“We played a good game against Porto and then after two days Bonucci came back, because he’s an important player, an extraordinary player and above all he has to understand that he’ll be the future leader of the Juventus dressing room.”
“Cardiff? The 2-1 and 3-1 being so close together really affected us. After Ronaldo’s first goal we regrouped and kept pushing.
“It’s a game which will serve as a lesson for us, especially in terms of managing games.
“You can’t play the whole game at 100 miles an hour, and we couldn’t think of playing the second half in the same way as the first because we’d pushed a lot in the first half.
“So we need to have more mastery of the game and know the rhythms better.
“If I could go back? I’d have made two or three changes at the start of the second half, but that was impossible because when you play a final there’s always the prospect of extra time.
“Pjanic had a knee problem and Mandzukic’s knee was swelling, so I sent them back onto the pitch hoping the match would go a certain way and we could handle them for 20 minutes.
“They were already on top in the last five minutes of the first half.
“For the first 40 minutes we’d stopped them, they were afraid of conceding and then in the second half they saw we were in more trouble and they pounced on us.”
