Massimiliano Allegri says Sunday’s Serie A clash between Juventus and AC Milan is more important for the Rossoneri despite overseeing a poor start to 2021-22.
Allegri has three league games in his second spell in Turin, but there has been no sign of a honeymoon period, with Juve not winning any of those games yet.
They eased some pressure with a 3-0 Champions League win on Tuesday, although the goodwill of that win will only last so long as it was against Malmo.
Failure on Sunday will leave Juve winless in their first four Serie A matches in a single season for the fourth time, the last time in 1961-62.
On the contrary, AC Milan – which this season are in the Champions League for the first time since 2013-14 – have won all three Serie A games in 2021-22, with Stefano Pioli’s men second only to Roma by difference. networks.
Despite the different beginnings of the season, Allegri insists that Sunday’s match is a more important deal for Milan than Juve, and he also wanted to emphasize that there is no reason to panic over their title hopes if Pioli’s team will start with a positive result.
“Tomorrow’s game is more important to them than to us,” Allegri told reporters, even though he would not openly explain why he felt that way. “That’s what you have to say, otherwise I’ll help you too much.”
On the title race he added: “I think there is no team that can crush the championship. Maybe I’m wrong.
“You can lose points, but you can also recover them quickly. We must not think that if we lose we will be 11 points behind, we must work thinking about recovering the ground we lost at the beginning.
“I’ve always said that championships are won against smaller teams. We don’t know what tomorrow’s result will be because the devil invented football: you can play well and in any case maybe you lose or draw.
“It’s not that before Malmö we had become poor drunkards and now we’re phenomenal again. We need balance. You have to work and have the ambition to win.
“I have to be a coach, because the team goes on the pitch, but I also have to hammer on the psychological aspect because Juve is a team that has to play not to win games, but to win championships.
“They win all the games, all the teams, but the championship will only be won by one. In the end, the team that was the best will win the championship ”.
Allegri’s return after a two-year absence has understandably evoked memories of Juventus’ extraordinary run of nine consecutive Scudetti, with the 54-year-old in charge for five of them.
But he believes that comparisons between the two teams and the two distinctly different eras are not useful.
“I found a Juventus with different players,” he continued. “We shouldn’t think about comparing Juve today with what they were in the past.
“This team has its own identity and individual characteristics of the players. You have to become a team by improving many things, in terms of personality, technique and patience in the game. But it’s just a different Juve. “
In a potential blow for Juve, Allegri confirmed that Federico Chiesa is in doubt for Sunday’s match.
The Italian international was involved in six goals against Milan in Serie A, a tally that has improved against no other team.
He also scored his only double for Juventus in the Italian top flight against the Rossoneri in January.
