Max Allegri urges Juventus not to ‘cry over spilt milk’ or penalty decisions in the 1-1 Europa League play-off draw with FC Nantes, but lost his temper with pundits who accused him of wanting 1-0 wins. ‘Look at my statistics, you chat about nothing.’
Dusan Vlahovic had opened the scoring after great work from Angel Di Maria and Federico Chiesa, then were extremely unlucky after the equaliser on the counter-attack.
Chiesa managed to hit the underside of the crossbar, the goal-line and the inside of the upright with the same shot, while Di Maria’s corner also came off the bar.
Above all, deep into stoppages the referee was called to the VAR monitor for Sebastien Corchia’s handball, but instead gave a free kick against Gleison Bremer for a push.
“There’s no point sitting here saying there was a penalty or a second yellow card,” Allegri told Sky Sport Italia when viewing the incident on a monitor.
“We could’ve done better with the way we moved the ball around. After taking the lead, we stopped, we moved the ball in slow motion. Only once we conceded the equaliser on a counter-attack did we switch back on again.
“You cannot control the ball in a tiny patch of turf, you have to move it around, make it move at more than 1mph, the ball was just rolling at times. Once we started moving it with pace, you saw that we created scoring opportunities.
“There were several chances to make it 2-1, but we need to be consistent and score more goals, especially in this game. There’s no point crying over spilt milk now, it won’t help one bit. We need to earn our qualification in France.”
Angel Di Maria had an opportunity to score for 2-0 and hesitated, the situation that then sparked the counter-attack for the Nantes equaliser with Ludovic Blas.
“Di Maria could’ve had a shot, he tried to dribble, then it was better to just go for the foul earlier. It had been coming, because we were static, we moved the ball too slowly and that goal woke us up.
“It was a good goal from Nantes too, not an easy finish at all.”
While Allegri took the penalty incident well, he lost his temper completely with the Sky Sport Italia pundits when it was suggested that leading 1-0 ought to be the default position of solidity for his Juventus team.
“I never said I wanted Juve to win 1-0, you drive me crazy with this rubbish. It’s this cliché that I want my teams to win 1-0, but that is not accurate. It’s simple, look at all the statistics of my teams, I always had the best defence and the second best attack. You cannot escape from the statistics. Look at Milan and Juventus, that is my record.
“My teams always scored 70-80 goals per season. You lot chat about nothing, I talk about numbers, that is the problem. I know you have to sit there and talk about nothing to fill time, but I don’t. You imagined this, created the story and then keep spreading it. You see things abstract, I see what is concrete. You’ve got all the statistics, look at them.
“In football, there is just one thing that counts: winning games. It doesn’t matter if it is 1-0 or 5-0. Nonetheless, the fact remains my teams always had the best defence and second best attack.”