Today was awards’ night both both on the European stage and in Italy: Cristiano Ronaldo came in third as far as the Balloon d’Or was concerned, while Matthijs De Ligt was 15th and won the Kopa trophy as best U-21. Domestically, Cristiano Ronaldo was elected the Serie A’s MVP for last season and, like Miralem Pjanic, Giorgio Chiellini and Joao Cancelo was voted into the team of the year.
Juventus’ chief football officer Fabio Paratici weighed in on the current affairs during the soiree: “In previous seasons, we have been even in fourth position at this point of the year and then we managed to come back. We are only in December, we are doing well and collected a lot of points, while Inter have done super well.”
“We are accustomed to be under pressure, we know we have to compete in order to win everything we play for. We are not worried about that. We are instead bothered by the criticism against Gianluigi Buffon: he, Leonardo Bonucci, Andrea Barzagli and Giorgio Chiellini are football heroes that have been with us for several years. They are great players and great persons. Their rare days off simply testify that they are human too. Some critics were too mean. Buffon is an icon, he is the best goalie in the history of the sports and a high-quality character.”
“Cristiano Ronaldo surely is not a problem. He will be here today to prove that he is the number one in Italy too. We thought he deserved to take home the Balloon d’Or too. He will certainly be with us next year too. Winning that award again is among his goals, we will try to support him by doing well in Champions League. He missed some time due to a knee problem, we thank him because he played even in imperfect conditions. It is just a suboptimal moment.”
On the upcoming transfer market window: “We will not make any purchases and perhaps we will not sell anybody but Mario Mandzukic. We decided to allow him to have this period where he could decide serenely what he could do next and pick among few opportunities. We will evaluated everything and then he will decide where to go. We are not discussing an extension with Paulo Dybala, he is our no.10 and we will do that at the proper time.”
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