Allegri: Juventus must get back to the normality of winning games

Juventus won yet another Derby della Mole, somewhat comfortably dispatching Torino 2-0 thanks to second half goals from Federico Gatti and Arkadiusz Milik.

Coach Massimiliano Allegri has been dubbed the ‘Master of Derbies’ picking up his 13th in his managerial career.

“I have trained some very strong teams that allowed me to do that.

“Toro were very aggressive in the first 25 minutes, then we got a bit more organised. Fabio Miretti did good work, as I needed a player between the lines, then after the break having Milik and Yildiz we knew that we could change the game.

“It was a mature performance, so we are improving in that sense, and I am happy.”

After a flat first half, Allegri made a formation change and it almost immediately paid dividends with Gatti’s opener.

“We made some wrong choices, above all when in control of the game and 2-0 up. We should’ve gone for the shot to finish off the moves and not allow Torino to stay in the game when they were struggling.

“The same thing happened in Bergamo, they opened up the midfielders quite wide and we struggled to close them down. When we moved to a more organised 4-4-2, we allowed them very little after that and above all were more aggressive.”

The coach has switched between the 3-5-2 and 4-4-2 previously too, is the latter going to become his formation of choice.

“It is very important to have different solutions based on the characteristics of the players, which you can use from the start or as the match goes on. We managed to bring home a good result in Bergamo, despite it not being the best performance, especially in the second half.”

Juve stay in third place behind the Milan duo, with Napoli and Fiorentina scheduled to play tomorrow and three points behind.

“The objective remains the same. That doesn’t preclude us from looking at other things, because naturally we are Juventus. We must keep our feet on the ground and bring back what for many years was normality at Juventus, in other words winning games.

“We still need to keep reminding the players what they need to do, especially as after the break for international duty we will have a game against Milan.”

What does he see as the most important areas for improvement?

“There are many things we need to improve. First of all, today the team defended well both as individuals and as a team, covering the spaces. What we do need to improve is what we do with the ball at our feet.

“There are some young players with very little experience, for instance Kenan Yildiz has such talent and nobody has ball control like him. He’s smart and ice cool too. Moise Kean did well today and I am glad he received the call-up for the Italy squad, he deserves it.

“I also hope that the stadium atmosphere will always be like this for the rest of the season, because this is what we need.”

His thoughts on Paul Pogba’s second sample also testing positive?

“On a human level, I am very close to him. I knew him since he was a young boy. It is a great pity for all of football to lose a player who was special. It is a difficult moment for him and we can only wish him the best.”

Federico Chiesa missed the game but has been called up for Italy’s EURO 2024 qualifiers against Malta and England.

“Chiesa was starting to feel a little better today, but not enough to feature. Nicolo Fagioli and Miretti I expect to get called up for Italy soon enough too.”