Massimiliano Allegri has thrown a wave of criticism towards his Juventus players following another lackluster Serie A performance. The Bianconeri followed up midweek’s 2-1 defeat to Sassuolo with an identical loss to Hellas Verona at the Stadio Marc’Antonio Bentegodi.
In-form Verona striker Giovanni Simeone notched up a quick-fire first-half brace to give Igor Tudor’s side a comfortable 2-0 lead at half-time. Allegri tried to shake things up a bit after the break by making four changes, but Juventus had to settle for Weston McKennie’s thunderous consolation strike in the 80th minute.
A perhaps unsurprising victory, especially considering Verona’s recent showings, has lifted the Gialloblu over Juventus in the Serie A table. Meanwhile, Allegri’s men, who are now winless in three consecutive league fixtures, currently sit 13 points behind early front-runners Napoli and Milan.
With the leading duo yet to play their matches, that gap could grow to 16, which may effectively kick Juventus out of the title race. Well aware his side are already well off the pace in the keenly-contested run-in, Allegri deemed Juve ‘mid-table team.’
“Words are meaningless right now. We’re in a bad situation, we have to accept the reality that right now we are a mid-table team. We can get out of this situation with a little more determination and quality,” he told DAZN, as cited by TUTTOmercatoWEB.
“We will drag ourselves out of this situation. There’s no point feeling sorry for ourselves, that won’t help, we just need to focus on what we need to do and then things will sort themselves out.
“It’s a good squad, but things don’t always go your way in football. We have to react with pride and determination. We had to play like a team that had one point, and we did, now we have to play like a team that has 15 points.
“We realized Verona were going to make it physical and a battle for every ball, so if you don’t meet them at that level, you will lose. Wearing the Juventus jersey does not give us a guarantee we must beat the teams in mid-table. We have to earn every point and do it with the right attitude.
“Football is football, it is not fencing. You need to fight it out on the pitch at the same level. We lost a lot of tackles and aerial duels against Sassuolo too, and they are frankly not a very physical side. Verona knew that was how they had to play in order to beat Juventus. Our mistake was assuming we were better than Verona, and right now we are not. We must be realistic.“