‘Sarri Initially Disgusted By Dybala Decision To Shoot At Goal’

Maurizio Sarri has revealed that he thought Paulo Dybala’s decision to shoot at goal was a bad one but was ultimately glad he did.

The Italian boss admitted he was sceptical about the memorable free kick at first.

Dybala scored a spectacular freekick against Atletico Madrid as Juventus secured a top spot finish from Group D.

From a tight angle at the right hand side of the goal post, the Argentine attacker scooped a fierce curler above and past the reach of Jan Oblak, gifting the Biaconeris all three points.

Speaking to reporters in the post-game interview, Sarri admitted his guy reaction to the goal in fact involved some swearing.

“Dybala scored a goal that nobody could have advised him to do,” Sarri said.

“The first thing that a coach says in that situation is: ‘Why the f*ck are you shooting from over there?’ And therefore what he did was extraordinary.

“The applause was owed to him, for the performance but also for the technical skill which was extraordinary.”

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While the 24-year-old attacker was the hero once again for the Turin giants, it was another frustrating game for Ronaldo as the Portuguese star looked to struggle throughout the encounter.

Having missed last Serie A’s encounter with Atalanta due to what Sarri described as a troublesome knee, he returned to the lineup against Atletico was afar off his best.

When Juve’s boss was quizzed on whether he thought Ronaldo was cut off from the game due to the newly adopted style of play, the Italian gaffer said:

“No, there was no problem with Ronaldo,” the former Chelsea boss said. “The problem was the way we were occupying spaces.

“In the first half Paulo was often playing far away from the goal, Cristiano was not playing in the centre and therefore we were never occupying the central spaces. We could have done this more with one of the two alternatively, when Paulo was going for the ball Cristiano could have played more in the centre and when Cristiano was out Dybala could have gone less for the ball.

“Otherwise we could have exploited that space with [Aaron] Ramsey, therefore we had some problem occupying spaces, rather than because we were cutting off players from the game.”