25 April 2021
Juventus left Florence with a point after a match in which they struggled to find their edge in the first half, only to explode into life through Alvaro Morata’s goal straight after the restart – a mere 31 seconds after the Spaniard had entered the fray. Check out reaction from Andrea Pirlo and Morata below.
ANDREA PIRLO
“We were very poor in the first half. Our approach needed to be different as this was a crucial game in the race for the Champions League. We were late to everything, we weren’t aggressive enough and we left our opponents too much space. We tried to play with three at the back and the full-backs pushed high, using [Aaron] Ramsey and [Paulo] Dybala to play between the lines, but our approach to the game was all wrong. They played a very high, aggressive defensive line, so we should have attacked the space more. It didn’t work for us, so we put on Morata at half time to give us that change of pace. We looked better after that, with [Dejan] Kulusevski out wide and [Juan] Cuadrado having the option to push up and flood that area the pitch with numbers. [Cristiano] Ronaldo had a few chances but he wasn’t able to take them. It wasn’t a bad performance overall from him.”
ALVARO MORATA
“I scored a nice goal, but it doesn’t count for much because we only got one point when we wanted to win. We need to win our upcoming matches so it’s important to get focused on that now. We were expecting Fiorentina to be hard to play against and keep things tight – the penalty changed the course of the game a bit but you have to deal with those difficulties. We did that in the second half – we reacted well and created the chances to score the second goal, but we just couldn’t get it. We’ve performed well against the big teams this year, so that’s the attitude we need to take into our upcoming games.”
