Pirlo: Championships are won on little details

Juventus did everything right for over ninety minutes, but then paid for about half a minute of losing concentration as they allowed Lazio to snatch a late, late equalizer in Rome Sunday.

Speaking after the game, coach Andrea Pirlo expressed his frustration at his side’s gaffe, while bemoaning their lack of killer instinct late on.

“We played a great game, they never had a shot on target. Championships are won if we take care of every detail, we mismanaged the ball in the final ten seconds and they scored the equalizer.

“The head is the most important thing, if you go on the pitch with a not positive attitude you do bad performances. Too bad for the result we deserved more.

“We lack malice and desire to achieve these results, there were no signs we would allow a goal, we have to give something more.”

Cristiano Ronaldo appeared to have picked up an injury and left the game with about fifteen minutes to play.

“Ronaldo is a key player not only for us but for all the teams where he played, he had an ankle problem and he was forced to leave.

“Who entered the pitch did well, we had problems to hold the ball and manage certain types of plays.”

Pirlo refused to use his team’s injury woes as an excuse for some of the performances.

“We are always working to improve, we put new ideas into every game.

“Today [Federico] Chiesa was unable to play in the last second, [Giorgio] Chiellini is injured and both Alex Sandro and [Matthijs] de Ligt are out but these can’t be excuses.”

Many viewers blamed Paulo Dybala for losing the ball and causing the chain of events that led to Lazio scoring.

“We pulled off a Juventus performance for 93 minutes and 45 seconds. We were solid and aggressive in the defensive phase, Lazio had created zero chances, then we conceded a goal on a ball that we could handle better.

“We must absolutely improve to reach our targets, it is the thing that must push us to give more and more. There are moments where you can risk the play, others where the ball must be kicked out of the stadium.”

“It’s not the fault of those who came in, [Paulo] Dybala and [Federico] Bernardeschi did the job they had to do.

“We lost a ball and four or five of us made mistakes. There was no indication that we were close to conceding a goal but if you’re not 100% focused, you risk conceding goals. It must serve as a lesson.”