Sunday, October 19, 2014

Italian football isn't rubbish, says Allegri

The 47-year-old believes too much attention is paid to controversial refereeing decisions in Serie A and has slammed the league's detractors

Serie A teams have performed badly in Europe of late, with the Bianconeri failing to reach the last 16 of the Champions League last term.
However, Allegri feels that people focus too much on controversial incidents - such as the ones which plagued his side's recent 3-2 win over Roma - and fail to recognise the good work players put in.
"In Italy, they always show you the less good things. Everybody says: 'Italian football is rubbish', but nobody does anything about the good stuff.
"Everyone says: 'Italian referees are the worst'. Then we have them officiating the World Cup final. Italian teams concede questionable penalties abroad and stay calm.
"What does harm to Italian football is that everyone talks about incidents and not the game. The game itself was good, intense, great to watch.
"You have to appreciate the play more and evaluate it, otherwise everything becomes an excuse.
"The decisions of [referee Gianluca] Rocchi came into focus because it was Juve-Roma. Nobody cares about that in a game of a lower level.
"So we lose a great Juventus performance against Roma, a great team with a great player in Francesco Totti."
Allegri went on to say that he now realises the full extent of how badly people view Juventus within Italy.
"In Italy, there are 50 million fans: 12 million support Juventus, the rest are of AC Milan, Inter, Roma and so on. But they are all against Juventus. I see that now