Spalletti Takes Blame After Sassuolo Collapse

Luciano Spalletti did not hide. After his side’s painful defeat away to Sassuolo on Sunday, the coach stepped in front of the cameras and pointed the finger at himself as much as at his players’ loss of control.

“It hurts a lot because the guys deservedly turned the game around,” Spalletti said, still raw from a match that slipped through their fingers. “We lost our balance, and that's something you can't do.”

The turning point was not a mystery to him. Chasing all three points, his team flooded forward.

“The players tried to go and win it. I was the one who pushed them to go and win this game,” he admitted. “Perhaps they followed what I asked a little too literally, because in the end we had too many players pushing into the Sassuolo box.”

The intent, though, is something he refused to criticise. Spalletti clung to that as the one redeeming thread in a damaging night.

“You also have to take the positive intention from the team: we lost because we were giving all we could to win it and not draw,” he said. “Of course, there's definitely some responsibility on our part, but it all came from the desire to go and win the game.”

Vicario Echoes Frustration

From the pitch, Guglielmo Vicario felt the same mix of pride in the reaction and anger at how it unravelled.

“We’re really disappointed,” the goalkeeper said. “I understand the desire to go and win the game because Juventus have an obligation to do that, but we lost our balance and it's something we'd spoken about during the week.”

The sting came from the sense that the hardest part had been done. They had dragged the match back their way. Then let it go.

“There's regret and anger because the game had turned in our favour,” Vicario admitted. “We need to be a little more careful because we're a team with a lot of quality.”

The message is clear: the ambition to win will not be toned down. The control to make it count has to be.