The Juventus manager had called the game against Spezia a ‘relegation showdown’ and they had to fight hard to win it
Even as he presided over Juventus’s worst start to a season for 60 years, Massimiliano Allegri still felt able to joke around. “If we look at the league table,” he quipped at a press conference before the Bianconeri faced Spezia on Wednesday night, “This is a relegation showdown.”
He was joking, right? It was hard to tell, when neither he nor anybody else in the room laughed. Poor results are rarely met in good humour at a club that lives by the manta of its former president, Giampiero Boniperti: “winning isn’t important, it’s the only thing that counts”. Only three times before in Juventus’ history had they started a Serie A season as poorly as this – without a victory in four games.