Poison rests
Alex Del Piero hasn't yet asismilated the crazy championship end

May 22, 2000
Raisport (translated by Alice)

"I don't come from an amazing season, the scudetto lost in the end with Juve made me very sad. But despite this all, I bet in myself". This way, Alessandro Del Piero tries to forget a season filled with more sadness than satisfactions and enters the European adventure with optimism and confidence, knowing he challenges also the general scepticism.

"After a season like this, it's normal that there's a certain expectation on the matches I'll play, and I know that those will be long days for me and my mates. Personally I hope to play a better European championship than the last one I played but the confirmation will come on the pitch. Some voices will only be silenced then. Even in the World Cup everyone said that Del Piero would burst, and indeed... I've burst - he smiles -. I've learned a lot from that experience, first of all to put behind every kind of critics, then to learn that losing is very bad and I understood this also seven days ago". The anger and the frustration for that lost scudetto are still very strong.

"Luckily there's no time to think too much about it and maybe it's good. Being with the azzurri will help deintoxicating after this championship. Because up to now I haven't managed to do it... The bitterness is too much and it's normal because me and my mates believed it until the end". "But it's right to turn the page now. When the laziali arrive - he adds - we'll congratulate them as we did last Sunday". Del Piero ends here all the polemics with Lazio players started with the insults launched by Nesta through the megaphone during during the first celebrations of the newly won title. And to those who ask if the championship left overs and poisons will prejudice the blue clan, he answers: "The left overs regard above all us juventini and the referees. I don't know about them, but about us from Juve, one can't deny that we've 'endured' a lot. But, I repeat, we must go on, the matches are finished, we got second place and we must accept the verdict".

Del Piero tries to swallow with composture a mouthful surely not easy to digest. "At Juve they've taught me to have a certain mentality and a certain attitude: to never point fingers to the guilty ones and to the bad things we go through, you must react to everything by working hard and looking for new incentives. There's an European tournament ahead of us. And then what happened in the championship may change the character".
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