Marchisio plans Europa trip for Juve

Juventus midfielder Claudio Marchisio said he is still hopeful his side can qualify for next season’s Europa League.

Juve are unbeaten in five matches and are seventh in Serie A.

With Udinese and Roma occupying the two Europa League spots ahead of them in fifth and sixth respectively, Juventus’ hopes appear to be out of their hands as they prepare for Saturday’s league game against Catania, according to Marchisio.

“(Our) last month was positive. We had three wins and a draw, some good performances and we gained some points,” the midfielder said.

“Now we need to focus on the last five games, but we can’t just focus on our own games, we need to look at the games that other teams will play. We still hope that something will happen.”

“The important thing is to continue like that, both from a mental and a physical point of view, because we have done very well. We didn’t make the same mistakes as we did in the game against Roma, so we need to continue that way.”

Marchisio blamed his side’s early form in the campaign for their struggle to reach Europe’s second tier competition, and leave them all but out of contention for next term’s Champions League.

“We missed some chances earlier in the season, not recently. It’s wasn’t the draw against Fiorentina that ended our hopes, but now we know there will be two important games, the one on Saturday against Catania in particular. If we win that game we can prepare well for the game against Roma, while Lazio will play against Inter Milan, so we will see,” he said.

“It’s important to continue like this and to try to gain three points, then we’ll go to Rome and hope for something.”

“Apart from the draws, we don’t need to consider all the missed opportunities. The last two are enough – the games against Lecce and Bologna. If we had won those two games we would have had six points more and we would have had the same points as Lazio now.”

“We cannot think like that now, the only thing we can do is try to win on Saturday and then go to Rome and see how it goes there.”