Ferrara defiant despite Juve tailspin

Juventus coach Ciro Ferrara brushed off questions about his future despite his team slumping to a seventh defeat in 10 matches following Sunday’s 1-0 reverse at Chievo.

Gennaro Sardo scored the only goal as Juve suffered a fourth defeat in five league matches.

Since defeating Serie A leaders Inter Milan 2-1 in Turin in December, they have lost to Catania, Bari and AC Milan as well as Chievo and slumped to 13 points off top.

In fact, the title is no longer a realistic objective for Juve who dropped to fourth and could drop another place if Napoli avoid defeat in Sunday’s late match.

It leaves Juve desperately fighting for a top four finish and Champions League football next season.

This season they have already been dumped out of the Champions League following successive defeats to Bordeaux (2-0) and Bayern Munich (4-1).

“The management are evaluating the team, the coach and the staff. If the problem is the coach the club will tell me,” said Ferrara defiantly.

“Nothing has been said to me directly in this sense. The team has ability but they’re not expressing it at the moment. We need to understand why.”

Ferrara described himself as “Rocky” earlier this week for his ability to keep taking punches without going down, but many commentators will be stunned that this latest defeat has not delivered the final, knockout blow.

Juve were missing three forwards — David Trezeguet, Vincenzo Iaquinta and Amauri — as well as Italy winger Mauro Camoranesi and defensive midfielders Momamed Sissoko (on African Nations Cup duty) and Christian Poulsen (who suffered a broken leg last week).

But they welcomed back Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon meaning they started a team including 10 internationals, amongst them four of Italy’s back five.

“It’s a negative period and I don’t want to make excuses. We had important players missing but those who did play gave their all,” said Ferrara before blaming the pitch.

“We conceded the goal and then there was no great comeback. In the seocnd half we tried to close down Chievo.

“At the end we gave it everything, putting on an extra forward but there were other difficulties.

“The pitch in Verona of course is not up to Serie A standards but it was the same for Chievo.

“I still have a lot of belief (in myself) even if I didn’t expect to face such problems. We have players who aren’t in great shape who need a rest but we can’t afford to give them that.

“From a morale perspective the lads are paying for their results.”

Juve general director Roberto Bettega insisted they would come through these dark times, much as AC Milan managed to do after a poor start to their season.

“The team has a lot of talent but they’re finding it difficult to adapt to the way their opponents are playing, and then there are the injuries,” he said.

“If Milan managed to recover from their presumed crisis by keeping faith with their players and coach, then we too will do the same.”

Milan had a disastrous start to their campaign winning just three and scoring a paltry six goals in their opening nine games of the season.

But now they are breathing down Inter’s necks and are through to the Champions League knock-out rounds.

Things won’t be getting easier for Juve either as next up they have AS Roma and former coach Claudio Ranieri to contend with.

Roma have just moved above Juve into third as they put together a run of seven wins and three draws in their last 10 league games.

Ranieri was fired by Juve two matches before the end of last season to be replaced by Ferrara but said he is not looking for revenge.

“Our paths divided but now I’m happily the coach of Roma. I have no revenge to take, I know I didn’t do well there, I did very well in Turin and now I’m in my home city with the team of my heart,” he said before suggesting he would not be surprised if Ferrara bit the dust.

“This is the destiny of a coach. I did well in Turin and so did (Carlo) Ancelotti and (Didier) Deschamps but they too left.”