Serie A: ‘Juventus know Inter are the favourites’, says Allegri

Massimiliano Allegri touched on the difficulties facing Juventus ahead of their trip to Genoa and took stock of the title race with Inter.

The Old Lady currently sit second in the Serie A table after 15 games, two points behind the league leaders Inter. Their recent Derby d’Italia clash ended 1-1, showing how tightly matched the two sides are.

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Juventus may have a slight advantage over Inter in the latter stages of the competitions thanks to their lack of European competition, but Simone Inzaghi’s side have done well to progress in the Champions League whilst maintaining momentum in Serie A.

Speaking in a press conference via TMW, Allegri first discussed the attitude Juventus need for their trip to Genoa.

“We need to be aware of the match we’re going to face, given that Genoa have important numbers at home. Gilardino is doing an excellent job, we will also find three guys against who grew up in Juve – Dragusin, De Winter and Vogliacco.”

He spoke about his personal points goal for the season and the condition of Adrien Rabiot.

“The personal goal counts for nothing, the important thing is the team’s goal. After four games we will evaluate the points from the first half. Rabiot is fine, we decided to stop Kean due to that tibia problem that we brought up.

“He was good at training and suffering, but now the time has come to stop him for three to four weeks to resolve things. There is no De Sciglio, who’ll be close to returning next year, Weah is back.”

The Juventus coach was asked about the post-playing careers of Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci.

“I believe that as an intelligent guy that Giorgio is, he has had an extraordinary career, now he has finished a part of his life and will have to decide what to do in the future. He has all the characteristics to play different roles.

“I don’t know about Leo, I think he intends to be a coach and I wish him the best when he stops playing. Maybe he will have the qualities and possibilities to do it. When players stop, they start a new life, and the jobs are completely different.”

He touched on the title race with Inter this season.

“We know that Inter are the favourites, they are a team that were built to win the league. President Zhang also said that the objective is the second star. We must work to improve without being satisfied. The league is a path to be managed with balance.”

Allegri spoke about the difficulties of facing Genoa and if 1-0 was his perfect result.

“No, the perfect result would be 3-0 so we suffer less, then 1-0 is fine too. At Genoa we always struggled, I remember once that after 20 minutes we hadn’t even started on the pitch, and we were down 3-0. We have to get at their pace and then put our qualities on the pitch.”

He was asked if he felt in conflict with the new generation of coaches.

“The fact that Ancelotti put me together with him and Mourinho is an honour. There are many good young coaches who necessarily have to make a career, we try to defend ourselves well regardless of how one interprets their job.

“I’ve always heard from those who have more experience that there is no winning method, no one can have the truth about football because there are too many variables.”

The Juventus coach commented on what he wants to see from Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic.

“I’m very happy with the forwards. The last three games, especially Dusan, has had good technical matches, even if he didn’t score a goal and missed a penalty in Monza. He’s also in a good physical and mental condition.

“At the start together with Chiesa he scored a lot of goals, maybe tomorrow he could break the deadlock. Now the goals have been scored by the midfielders and defenders. The important thing is that the forwards provide this pressure which helps us defend better.”

He was asked if anything about Juventus has surprised him this term.

“Surprised, no, I was intrigued, and I am now by what we could and will be able to do. These points are not enough for anything, we have to get as many as possible. The best feature is that the boys have become a team, there is no one who sets personal goals ahead of team ones.”

Finally, Allegri discussed if he’d leave Juventus should they win the Scudetto this season.

“First of all, I’m not tired, I haven’t been a director because Juve has had and has excellent directors. To obtain results you need an excellent club, and this has never been lacking.

“We have followed a path of growth and we must continue to improve with the main objective which is to return to play in the Champions League. An objective which we did not miss last year.”