A fourth league loss of the campaign on Sunday put another dent on the Italian champions’ hopes of a 10th straight Scudetto success.
Stefano Pioli admits surprise at Juventus’ 1-0 loss to Benevento, saying the result was “completely unexpected” for him.
Cristiano Ronaldo thought he had handed Juventus the lead when he guided Dejan Kulusevski’s cross into the back of the net, but his goal was disallowed due to offside.
Benevento opened the scoring after capitalizing on a fatal error by Arthur Melo and held onto their lead to get their first-ever win against Juve.
The defeat saw Andrea Pirlo’s men miss the chance to go back up to second in the Serie A standings and they now find themselves lagging 10 points behind leaders Inter Milan.
“No, I’ll be honest, that was completely unexpected,” responded Pioli when asked if he expected Juve to lose to the 16th-placed side, via Football Italia.
“That is football, anything can happen, but we didn’t see that coming.”
Milan, meanwhile, continued to put pressure on rivals Inter after sealing a hard-fought 3-2 win over Fiorentina.
Pioli added: “This was the most difficult game, because we were coming off the disappointment of the Europa League, we had been playing every three days for many months and knew we had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for the remaining drops of energy to get it done.”
Be sure not to miss out on the latest news about Juventus
Download our brand new App and follow your favorite players, clubs, and much more
