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| Juventus' Italian head coach Massimiliano Allegri (R) gives instructions during the Italian Serie A football match between Juventus and AS Roma on October 17, 2021 at the Juventus stadium in Turin. |
In a see-saw game that saw both sides dominating different spells, Juventus narrowly beat AS Roma 1-0 to make it four straight league wins after four games to start the season where they could not find a win.
Speaking after the final whistle, Allegri was happy with the victory that sees the Bianconeri up to seventh now with fourteen points, but just three off Inter Milan in third place.
“I like 1-0, as it’s a good result, especially as we kept another clean sheet.
“Roma are a technically good team, they have a lot of quality and caused us problems early on, then we scored a good goal and improved as time wore on.”
While fans are continuing to get restless with Juve’s passive style that is seeing them focusing on defence and using counterattacks mostly to attack, Allegri insisted that is all part of the plan for now.
“We have players more suited to counter-attacks, those are their characteristics, so when we try to play the ball, we either fall asleep or get irritable.
“It’s an important victory, another step forward in the table and a further progress for the season. We were missing Paulo Dybala, Matthijs De Ligt, Adrien Rabiot, and Alvaro Morata only came on at the end, but when everyone plays with that spirit, you don’t concede as many goals.
“We are starting to slow the game down at the right time, but we need to step up the pace too when it’s required. I won’t lie, I probably did damage too at the start with some of my choices, I had to get to know some players and their characteristics, but we’re getting there.”
Wojciech Szczesny was a big part of Juve’s early season’s struggles, but seems to have stabilized and had a couple of big saves in the win, none bigger than the penalty from Jordan Veretout that preserved the clean sheet.
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| Massimiliano Allegri and Josè Mourinho prior the Serie A match between Juventus and AS Roma at on October 17, 2021 in Turin, Italy. |
“Szczesny made all his mistakes for the season in one fell swoop and is now bringing back what he can to the team. We need to improve in the final third, the timing and movement, but we’ll get there.”
Roma manager Jose Mourinho has had a volatile relationship with the Juventus fans dating back to his time winning the treble with Inter, and tried to taunt the Curva Sud again holding up three fingers late in the game, but Allegri played down any controversy praising today’s opponents.
“We knew beforehand it would be tough. Roma could’ve deserved a draw, but these are games that depend on incidents and tonight fortunately they went our way. I do say they put in a good performance and are one of the best teams in the league.”
