Juric irritable after Atalanta draw: ‘Carnesecchi needs to talk less’

Ivan Juric told Marco Carnesecchi he needs to ‘talk less’ after Atalanta were held to another disappointing draw by Cremonese. ‘We had too many scoring opportunities go to waste.’

La Dea managed to maintain their unbeaten Serie A record at the Stadio Zini thanks to a goal from substitute Marco Brescianini, after Jamie Vardy had put Cremonese in front with his debut goal.

“I did not like the team in the first half, they were sluggish, and it’s not just about the Champions League, because I didn’t like the way those who were rotated played either,” Juric told Sky Sport Italia.

“After the break, we did the usual thing of creating a ton of chances and then allowing a counter-attack, which can happen in football. We did much better, but once again we had too many scoring opportunities go to waste.”

Although they are yet to taste defeat in Italy, the fact remains Atalanta have just 12 points, because they have drawn six of their eight games in the league.

Including the Champions League, they’ve played four consecutive stalemates, which means they have just one point more than newly-promoted Cremonese.

In his post-match interview, Marco Carnesecchi said that Atalanta had to change gear or they would “go nowhere” with this pace of results.

Juric was told about the comments and did not appreciate the constructive criticism.

“Marco is an ambitious guy, but he was completely wrong. His job is to save shots, be professional and talk a lot less. That’s true of many players, not just him,” replied the coach.

“I am very satisfied with the overall performances, but when we keep creating these chances and don’t win for several games in a row, it irritates me. I don’t think Carnesecchi is suited to talk about this situation.

“Carnesecchi is a good lad, he’s doing really well and I see how hard he works, but all these players are working their socks off. If we create 20-25 chances every game and don’t score, there are reasons for it. Lookman and Scamacca didn’t train over the summer, so they need to get into shape.”

Atalanta have put together a streak of disappointing draws against teams they had expected to beat, whereas the upcoming fixture list includes Milan, Udinese, Olympique Marseille, Sassuolo, Napoli, Eintracht Frankfurt and Fiorentina.

Will they be able to create this many chances to score in those games?

“We have dropped points, that is true, and we need to improve, but we also saw strong performances against teams like Juventus and Club Brugge,” assured Juric.