Juventus was beaten by the Partenopei in a closely contested game that had to be separated by a soft spot-kick.

It was one of those games that the Bianconeri didn’t look their best and it showed as they eventually lost to a Napoli side that needed to save their manager’s job.

Pirlo isn’t the most outspoken of managers, but he didn’t hide his anger at what he thought was a soft penalty.

He said the penalty wasn’t supposed to be given because it means that any contact would now be considered a spot-kick.

He then insisted that if they gave it to his team, a lot of controversies would have arisen from it.

For his team’s lack of sharpness in the game, he blamed the number of games that they have been playing this season.

He told Sky Sports Italia as quoted by Football Italia: “If you give a penalty for that, then any contact will be punishable by a spot-kick. If that had been given for us, there would’ve been a lot of controversy and complaints, assuming it’d be given to us at all.

“I am just saying the incidents went that way today. It was a dubious penalty, a doubt over the double yellow card for Giovanni Di Lorenzo. Some incidents are treated differently when against Juventus, because everyone talks about us. Sometimes that tactic works, sometimes it doesn’t. Never mind.

“It’s natural when playing this many games that we lack a bit of sharpness, but it was a good performance and the only thing we were missing was a goal.

“There’s no guarantee the team that scores the most goals then wins the Scudetto. We create plenty of chances, the Napoli goalkeeper was Man of the Match, so I can’t complain about my strikers today.

“We could be 10 points off the top with a game in hand, but it’s still only February and if we keep playing at this level, we’ll do well.

“If we put in this type of performance and score goals, then I am sure we’ll get the results we want.”

Pirlo has a point but excuses will only work for so long, he needs to get the team back to winning ways straight away because there is a risk that they will leave themselves too much to do, especially if Inter keep winning.