Juventus Begins Damage Control
Copyright � 1999 Nando Media
Copyright � 1999 Agence France-Presse
MILAN, Italy (August 30, 1999 9:04 a.m. EDT http://www.sportserver.com) -
Juventus coach Carlo Ancelotti was busy with a damage limitation exercise on Monday after the club was held to a draw at home by minnows Reggina.
Juventus, Italy's most successful soccer club, was expected to crush a side playing its first-ever Serie A match in the club's 85-year history.
Instead, the season-opener finished 1-1 on Sunday night and Ancelotti's men were whistled off at the final whistle by a furious Delle Alpi crowd.
Ancelotti tried to play down the upset, saying: "We're all a bit surprised by the result. But I don't think people should make a drama out of it. What annoys me is having lost two points.
"We knew that we had a lot of things to improve. We didn't have much pace in the first half, but were still able to play reasonably well and created a lot of scoring chances, and converted one of them.
"In the second half, we weren't lucid enough to create more chances and we conceded a goal because of the only lapse in concentration we had. We were punished for it, and then it became difficult to come back."
Though Filippo Inzaghi continued his pre-season goalscoring form, there were less encouraging signs from the team's other two stars, Alessandro Del Piero and Frenchman Zinedine Zidane, both coming back from surgery.
But Ancelotti said: "We can't ask anything of Del Piero and Zidane at the moment, we just have to make do what they can give us. Their objective is to keep working on reaching peak fitness."
As for the whistles from the home crowd, Ancelotti said: "They're understandable when you don't get a result. And I'm a bit disappointed about it as well.
"But I repeat, we've only lost two points," he told the Gazzetta dello Sport. "There's nothing else that I should be worried about."
However, his team were clearly unhappy at the way Sierro Leone teenager Mohamed Kallon was able to rise unchallenged to head home Reggina's equalizer, two minutes after the re-start.
Inzaghi said: "A team like ours shouldn't concede goals like that... it was absurd."
Dutch goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar, helpless against the potent close-range header, tried not to criticise his new teammates on his debut.
But the former Ajax star admitted: "Kallon was all alone in the penalty area when the corner came over. That's something very strange."
