Luciano Spalletti insists that Inter are still the strongest team in Serie A, has urged his Juventus squad to ‘learn’ in order to get to the required level and has provided an update on star attacker Kenan Yildiz ahead of the pre-season friendly between the Old Lady and the Nerazzurri on Saturday.
Juventus and Inter will face off in a pre-season Derby d’Italia, being played in Perth at 12.00 BST (21.00 local time) on Saturday.
Click here to read what Cristian Chivu had to say in his pre-match press conference.
Spalletti sat down to speak to the media on Friday ahead of Saturday’s test against rivals Inter, discussing several topics including Juve’s activity in the summer transfer window, the fitness of Yildiz, transfer links to Alessandro Circati and the prospect of facing Alessandro Bastoni again after a controversial meeting the last time these two sides faced each other.
Spalletti on Juventus vs. Inter, Yildiz, Bastoni and more
“These are the sorts of games that help you understand a lot about the mentality of the team and whether or not we’re working in the right direction,” Spalletti told the media ahead of Saturday’s game against Inter (via TMW).
“Obviously, Inter are a very strong team like Chelsea, so we will need to be a team in every moment of the game because Inter will find advantages if we’re not compact.”
Spalletti was asked for an update on Kenan Yildiz and whether he will feature against Inter on Saturday.
“He will play more than he did in the game against Chelsea,” Spalletti confirmed. “We were without three or four players in training today to manage their workloads and the fatigue that is accumulating. It’s not easy to organise these sorts of events. They take extra effort and we’ll have to discuss it over the next few days to see how we’ve recovered.
“I will see after the game tomorrow whether he will be a starter (in the league), but I think I will let him play for a half, or almost a half.”
Spalletti was also asked specifically about Juventus’s links to Parma centre-back Alessandro Circati.
He replied: “He’s a promising young player who has shown a lot of great qualities and he could also be of interest to any club. But right now, we only have a couple of strong routes in our sights and those do not concern him. We can’t create alternative situations at the moment because we have a very large squad.”
Even though Juventus have brought in two new strikers in Randal Kolo Muani and Jeff Ekhator to replace Dusan Vlahovic, plus the signing of Kerim Alajbegovic, Spalletti was asked whether he is ‘lacking’ a player who can guarantee 20 goals a season.
The Juventus head coach responded: “I think we’ve signed players who collectively will be able to exceed those numbers. It’s not important to have somebody who scores 20 goals. This year, the season will be characterised by the fact that it will be played on Thursdays and Sundays, it will be difficult to always play with the same players.
“The Europa League engages you even more than the Champions League. Even without a physical centre-forward, we have Ekhator who has a few of those characteristics, Kolo Muani commands the area. It’s a bit of an open situation, but with the players we have available, with what we’ve done on the market, we’ll be able to make up for it through everyone’s collective work.
“Alajbegovic is somebody who can score goals. We want to help Kolo Muani’s numbers. We’re quite calm for the moment.”
Lastly, Spalletti was asked if there are still any hard feelings towards Alessandro Bastoni following his dive and infamous celebration of Pierre Kalulu’s wrongful sending off the last time these two teams met.
“It will be simple, we will continue to do what we did after that game. We didn’t create any big aftermath, we didn’t talk about the players’ behaviour on the pitch. We just want to play a good game against the strongest side in our league and learn as many things as possible to get to their level.”
Source: Football Italia
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