Andrea Pirlo has slammed his side’s attitude after their defeat to Inter Milan, and claims he had drilled his Juventus side on how to stop their rivals.
The Nerazzurri put in an assured performance from start to finish, and were clinical in attack. They were quick on the counter, and hurt us with their pace and numbers in the final third, and with the early goal were able to control the fixture.
Juve boss Andrea Pirlo insists that his side had the wrong mentality from the kick-off, and were always going to struggle with that attitude.
“Our attitude was all wrong from the very beginning and when you lack anger and determination in matches like these, it’s an uphill struggle,” Pirlo stated after full-time (as translated by Juve’s official website.
“We dropped deep and were too fearful of Inter’s attack – we were entirely preoccupied by our defensive work, without even being aggressive, but in these sorts of contests you need to match your opponents for competitive desire.
“Over a long run, these slip-ups can happen and it’s a shame because we came into this in good form, however a team like Juventus can never show that kind of attitude.
“In our preparations for the match, we focused on their switches of play and the forward runs of their central midfielders, and that’s exactly where their goals came from.
“However, if the team fails to do what we rehearsed, it’s my responsibility. We couldn’t have put in a worse performance than this but now we need to pick ourselves up because we’ve got a cup final on Wednesday.”
We are set to take on Napoli in midweek in the Italian Super Coppa, where we will be targeting another trophy triumph, and we will, hopefully be able to call upon the absent trio of Matthijs De Ligt, Juan Cuadrado and Alex Sandro, who could all have been integral for our side at the weekend.
Was Pirlo wrong to claim we had to wrong attitude from the off? Did we actually start well but struggled to pick ourselves up after the early goal?
Patrick