Juventus boss Andrea Pirlo has sent out a warning to his rivals for the scudetto after his side’s expulsion from the Champions League.

The Old Lady currently trail in the division by 10 points, albeit having played one match less than Inter Milan who occupy top spot at present.

It’s been an incredibly jampacked schedule for Pirlo’s opening campaign in charge, playing twice almost every week since the beginning of the campaign excluding international breaks, and he has had to juggle a number of injury and Covid-related absences also.

While he accepts that his side should have done better in the Champions League knockout round with Porto, he vowed that this would help his side to target top spot in the division.

“We made four mistakes over the two legs and in the last 16 of the Champions League that’s a lot,” Pirlo stated after the final whistle last night (via Juventus.com). “Now we have to focus our thoughts on Serie A because it’s only March and there’s still time to climb back up the table.

“We made a decent start tonight then conceded a penalty, but we quickly pulled ourselves together and were in control in the second half, aided of course by being a man up. We needed to stretch them as much as possible and we tried to do that without rushing things – that’s how we scored our goals.

“We’ll have time to improve now and work on the things we didn’t have the chance to do before with all the back-to-back games.”

I know it is hard to digest, but Pirlo’s campaign has been marred with issues that were out of his control, and he has still been able to lead our side to a number of important wins, and I certainly wouldn’t doubt them to put in a serious bid to return to the top of the table.

While Pirlo claims the loss will help our side to challenge for the league, he will need to find a way to pick his players up before the weekend when they take on Cagliari, which could well be a bigger challenge than expected.

Patrick