Barzagli: ‘Back to the real Juventus’

By Football Italia staff

Andrea Barzagli says he and his teammates wanted to “get back to being the real Juventus”, and five clean sheets in a row have been “crucial” to that.

The Bianconeri started the season conceding an uncharacteristic number of goals, but they’ve tightened up in recent weeks.

Barzagli said before the Champions League game with Barcelona that Juve had to rediscover their spirit of sacrifice, and that match was the first of the run of clean sheets.

“Yes, but it wasn’t just my message obviously,” the veteran defender pointed out in his interview with Sky.

“A lot of it came from the Coach [Max Allegri], but the most important thing is that we’ve put in a lot of hard work and I think that’s what wins you games and titles.

“Not conceding goals over these five games has been crucial, but we could really see the work the strikers and the midfielders were putting in to support us, and then we defenders did our job and defended well.

“There was a lot of commitment and sacrifice from everyone though. You could see that against Inter, an important team with good players up-front.

“They couldn’t even cross successfully and didn’t have many chances. That tells you that we all worked well defensively. There was a desire to get back to being the real Juventus.

“I think this is a much more balanced league than in recent years, there are some really good teams but I think we also have a really strong team.

“It’s not up to me to say whether or not we’re stronger than the others.

“We got through in the Champions League though, we’re two points off the top of the league, so we’re having a good season like we’ve done in other years.

“It’s normal that we expect a lot from Juventus, so maybe for some people the fact we’re third is a negative signal.

“We’re doing great things though, it’s just that Inter and Napoli are doing even more and they’ve hardly dropped any points.”

Barzagli will be 37 in May, but it’s been reported this week he’ll sign a one-year contract extension…

“It’s something we’re discussing calmly with the club. I haven’t signed yet, we’ll see in the coming weeks and months, there’s no need to do it right away.

“We’ll talk very calmly, as we’ve always done.”

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