“?Giorgio Chiellini has lamented the loss for Paul Pogba to Manchester United, and described him as the LeBron James and Usain Bolt of football during his time at Juventus.
The centre back does not believe that the reigning Scudetto champions are the same side since Pogba completed a world-record £89m transfer back to the Premier League with United.
Speaking to “?Sky Sport Italia, Chiellini mourned the loss of the 23-year-old from the Turin side, before comparing him to the world’s greatest sprinter and one of the NBA’s finest basketball players of all time.
He said: “We’ve changed players and now we are a side like any other.
“We’re not used to losing and, in addition to this, we’ve lost a player like Pogba who was the LeBron James of football and, even when you didn’t notice him, he was impressive. Pogba was our Usain Bolt. He allowed us to play in a certain way. Now we’ve changed. We’re working on it and [Massimiliano] Allegri is not an idiot.”
The defeat Chiellini was speaking of – the club’s 2-1 defeat to Fiorentina – was the fourth such loss in Serie A that Juventus had suffered so far in 2016/17.
I Bianconeri only lost five matches in Italy’s top flight throughout the entirety of last season, and tasted defeat on just three occasions during their title triumph in 2014/15. With half the campaign still to play, Juventus lie only one point ahead of title rivals Roma, while Napoli sit just four points off the pace as well.
Speaking in the “?aftermath of their defeat to Fiorentina, Massimiliano Allegri described the loss as a “bad setback” and insisted his players needed to remain focussed or they would lose out on winning a sixth successive league trophy.
He said: “It’s a bad setback for us, but we still have the chance to be four points clear and nobody thought we’d win the title in January.
Juve’s Giorgio Chiellini says Paul Pogba is to football what LeBron James is to basketball and Usain Bolt is to sprinting..#pogba #mufc pic.twitter.com/JBSNrUVIsz
“Teams always play the match of their lives against Juve, like Fiorentina and Genoa, so we must always have our intensity up and give everything, because the opposition do the same against us.
“It’s going to be a battle and we need to fight it out for every single point from here to May 28. It won’t be easy. Roma and Napoli are behind us, so it will be a fight to the end, but we need to learn from this defeat.
“It is not good enough to give less than 100 per cent, because teams always give more than 100 per cent against us.”
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