Miralem Pjanic has explained that he never had any intention of leaving Juventus this summer while expressing his excitement to play under Maurizio Sarri.

The Juve midfielder is expected to be a key part of Sarri’s new-look Bianconeri side and expressed his happiness at playing a key role in the team.

“In football and in Sarri’s team, my role is im­por­tant, I will def­i­nitely en­joy it,” he told Gazzetta Dello Sport.

“It’s my objective to touch the ball 150 times a game, but it doesn’t matter if it’s 120 or 150: what matters is playing well, freeing up teammates and expressing a style of play that’s nice on the eye, quick and on the deck.

“Sarri? He is very well pre­pared, a great coach that has won the Europa League. With the qual­ity he has, we will have so much fun. We need to un­der­stand how to move and ar­rive on the pitch pre­pared: we must al­ways move to free up new spa­ces.

“Training? They were pos­i­tive days, in­tense, a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing than in the past. We are un­der­stand­ing what the mister is ask­ing for, we are open to his re­quests.

“He of­ten di­vides us into groups and does work with the de­fend­ers, the strik­ers and the mid­field­ers apart from one anther. It takes time, but for now ev­ery­thing is go­ing well.

“Matthijs? De Ligt is a great player, in the last few years he’s shown a lot of char­ac­ter and is al­ready very ma­ture, pre­pared. The Dutch will help us to achieve other goals. The Champions League is my dream and I will do ev­ery­thing to win, with­out for­getting Serie A.

“I never thought about leaving Juventus. I had an incredible relationship with Allegri and we laughed about the speculation.

“I’m very happy in Turin, I have fantastic players around me, I want to get even better and I want to help my new teammates.”