Juventus coach Andrea Pirlo has refused to admit defeat in the race for the title after his side loss 2 – 0 to Inter Milan on Sunday.
The defeat saw Juventus slip to fifth position on the table and seven points behind co-leaders, AC Milan and Inter.
Arturo Vidal had open scoring 12th minute into the encounter for the San Siro based club before Nicolo Barella added doubled the lead in the second half.
Pirlo had criticised his players after the game, but insisted that the race for the Scudetto isn’t over for the Turin giants, who are looking forward to their 37th title this season.
“Our ambitions remain the same,” he said. “It’s a slip-up against a strong opponent, these things happen, but what I am disappointed by is the attitude, The 42-year-old tactician told Sky Sports Italia, “A side like Juventus must come here with a certain confidence and ambition, the desire to take the initiative and steer the game in a certain direction, but we were too timid.
“We were too slow in our passing and above all did it with our defenders rather than the midfielders. We wanted to create the situation where [Federico] Chiesa could take men on or [Aaron] Ramsey could go between the lines. That didn’t happen, because we moved it too slowly and too deep, so we never really pulled Inter players out of position. We were too predictable.
“The coach is always the first to take the blame, because if the team didn’t do what we planned, it means we didn’t understand the plan.
“We were disorganised on the opening goal, didn’t follow their through runs and were caught out. It all became more difficult from there.”
He continued: “It’s a bad defeat, we could not have played worse than this and it was unexpected, but we have to lift our heads and prepare for Wednesday and the Supercoppa against Napoli.
“We got the attitude wrong from the start and when you don’t have the determination to win duels, it becomes difficult,” he continued.
“We just didn’t step onto the pitch, we were timorous, afraid of Inter’s attacking play, so in our minds we only focused on defending and weren’t even very aggressive with that either. We allowed Inter to take the initiative and they became devastating in those circumstances.
“Individual quality can only shine if you first match the opposition in terms of aggression and determination. We didn’t do that and it showed.”
