Allegri: “Game like no other, Juventus have repsect for Milan”

MASSIMILIANO ALLEGRI is getting ready for his San Siro return when his Juventus face Milan.

Allegri coached Milan for 3.5 years, winning the Scudetto on his debut year. He was fired back in January and was replaced by Clarence Seedorf. Since then Seedorf has already been sacked and replaced by Filippo Inzaghi, who has had a positive start to his coaching career with two wins. Tomorrow ‘veteran’ Allegri, now at Juve, faces the young Pippo for a San Siro clash.

“For me it won’t be a match like the others. I’m not a machine and if I said the opposite I wouldn’t be human. I spent three and a half splendid years at Milan, that by now are in my past, but it’s obvious that after a long time some relationships are still alive,” Allegri said in the presser today.

“My rapport with Galliani has always been excellent and the same goes for the President and for whoever worked at Milan. It will be an evening full of emotions and it’s normal. Inzaghi has been good at bringing the enthusiasm back to a club that in the last 6 months has had its difficulties. At this moment, we have to prepare for a side that in addition to having good qualities, has a desire for revenge and to show that it can fight for the top three places. It’ll be an important match for them.

“Inzaghi and I have two different histories on a professional level. He was a great champion and won everything, my career as a footballer cannot be compared to his. As a coach I started with the smaller sides and luckily with good results. He’s at Milan straight away which is practically his home and I wish him all the luck in the world, but maybe the day after tomorrow because I would like to win on Saturday… Us the favourites tomorrow? You can never say this for these types of matches.

“I think that they, like us, have prepared for the match and they are preparing in the best way because tomorrow is Milan-Juventus. It will be a fascinating challenge, a beautiful game as it has always been, in a full Stadio San Siro and I believe that such a challenge at this time can only be good for Italian football. It will definitely be a good game, where you will see two teams trying to win over one another, this is the important thing. Playing at the San Siro isn’t easy for anybody.

“We know we’re strong, but we have to have big respect for Milan. We will try to do everything possible to get a positive result, knowing that we face a team that is doing well right now, as evidenced by the points they have, a team that scores a lot of goals, that has scored eight goals in two games, so we must be careful. At this time the strength of Milan is there, even if they still want to hide it, but I think that they had a good transfer market. They signed 6-7 big players and starters for the team. The last two, Torres and Bonaventura, are two important players of great quality, technically and above all in morale.

“So, right now the thing we must do is to not have fear – we must prepare ourselves for the fact that we find a team that in addition to having good technical qualities has enthusiasm and the desire for revenge, desire to prove that they too can fight for the top three places. Tomorrow will be an important game for them for the rest of the season, even though we’re only at the third round. It’s too soon to talk about the Scudetto or other things. Milan’s match against Parma? I think the Parma game was a strange one – in the season there are strange games with lots of goals and at Parma this was the case.

“The fourth Parma goal was through the injury to the goalkeeper and there were another two or three situations that are difficult to see happening again in another game. I think that the game they played against Lazio is where they played well, where they showed signs of strength. Arturo Vidal (who has been struggling with an injury in recent days and didn’t play against Malmo)? He trained with the team a while yesterday – he will work with team today and then we’ll decide whether to send him on to the field from the beginning or start on the bench. However, he has taken a step forward and I’m happy.”

Probable Juve XI, according to Gazzetta.it: Gianluigi Buffon; Martin Caceres, Leonardo Bonucci, Giorgio Chiellini; Stephan Lichtsteiner, Roberto Pereyra, Claudio Marchisio, Paul Pogba, Kwadwo Asamoah; Fernando Llorente, Carlos Tevez.

Translation credit: Football Italia