17 December 2017
Massimiliano Allegri praised the way his Juventus side are improving week on week after they dispatched Bologna with a comfortable 3-0 win at the Stadio Dall’Ara on Sunday afternoon.
The Bianconeri were close to perfection against Roberto Donadoni’s Bologna as they secured a sixth clean sheet of the season, but the Juventus coach was keen to stress that there is no such thing as a perfect team.
"The perfect Juve doesn’t exist – Juve just need to be solid and win football matches," he said. "We’re achieving that because the whole squad is ready to work hard. We’re improving and slowly but surely we’re hitting top form.
"We’ve made a lot of progress. When we went 2-0 up at Atalanta after 25 minutes we just stopped playing, we took our foot off the gas against Lazio at home after a good 50 minutes, then at Sampdoria we stopped playing after a decent first half – we needed to learn from those games."
Much of the post-match media attention focused on Allegri’s decision to start with Paulo Dybala on the bench once again.
"He looked good when he came on and is doing well in training," said the Bianconeri coach. "I made the decision to leave him out, but up until recently he’d played every game. He’s an extraordinary player but he can still improve a lot and he needs to make sure he doesn’t just focus on goals, because his job is to chip in with lots of assists as well as goals.
"It’s disappointing that too much responsibility is placed on Paulo’s shoulders. We have top players at Juventus so somebody has to miss out. You have these spells during a season – sometimes players lose a bit of fitness and you have to ensure the team is at full power, but other players you just have to leave be."
Allegri also confirmed that Mario Mandzukic has a "cut on his calf" and that his condition will be monitored moving forward.
