Juventus goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny revealed that Arkadiusz Milik apologised to the Bianconeri squad in the dressing room after his first-half sending off during Saturday’s 1-1 draw against Empoli, but insisted that his international teammate didn’t really need to say sorry.
Milik was given his marching orders 18 minutes into proceedings at the Allianz Stadium with the scores level at 0-0 at the time. Referee Livio Marinelli had originally reached for a yellow, before upgrading his decision to red after an on-field VAR review.
Five minutes after the restart of play for the second half, Dusan Vlahovic put Juve ahead with his 12th Serie A goal of the 2023-24 season, only for Tommaso Baldanzi to equalise for Empoli 20 minutes later.
Speaking to Sky Sport Italia after full-time, Szczesny said: “Milik apologised to the team, but there was no need. We can all make mistakes, today it was his turn to make a mistake, but he is still a very important player for us and he must repay us with lots of goals in the next matches.
“The incident had an influence on the match, we did well to get ourselves together again, but unfortunately we weren’t able to come away with the victory.
“With the quality players they have and with the ones they brought off the bench in the second half, it was always going to be hard not to concede. The draw is fair and it’s not that bad (a result),” Szczesny said, reported via TMW.
On the mood in the Juventus dressing room, Szczesny said: “We want to go again and we have no shortage of motivation. We will have a great challenge against Inter and we will go there trying to bring home the important points for our fight.
“It hurts not to win at home, but the way things were going is a positive for us. We’ll take it and prepare for the next one.”
Juventus will travel to San Siro to play Inter next Sunday in arguably the biggest game of the Serie A season so far, kicking off at 19.45 GMT.