Conte salutes Juve attackers

Juventus coach Antonio Conte praised the work of his forwards in their 2-0 win over Celtic in the Champions League on Wednesday.

Strikes from Alessandro Matri and Fabio Quagliarella put the last-16 tie beyond their Scottish opponents as it finished 5-0 on aggregate.

Conte highlighted that Juve’s European campaign would require his whole team to contribute to deal with the stress of a busy schedule.

“I usually try to alternate the forward players and they all score goals and allow the team to win, therefore I don’t see any problem in this way of playing and … Today [Sebastian] Giovinco and [Mirko] Vucinic didn’t play,” Conte said.

“Matri and Quagliarella played today and they scored goals. I have four forward players, five considering also [Nicolas] Anelka, who has recently joined the team and has to recover from a problem to his back.

“What is important is that the players on the pitch play for the whole team and not for themselves.”

Though guarded in his optimism, Conte admitted Juventus were in a great position to chase a third European title.

“Let’s see what will come next. We’re aware that we will have more and more attention on us because from now on there will be surely more and more pressure on physical and mental energies,” Conte said.

“Therefore it’s important that the whole group is available because we’ll need everyone. Tonight I’ve proved that we can manage to play like this and I’ll keep on proving that we’re able to do it, as I’ve always done.

“We’ll see what we have to expect from the forthcoming Champions League draws. We have to be very concentrated.

“This is the first year that we find ourselves in this situation and we like it, but there are pros and cons and we have to do our best not to let the cons affect our performance in the championship.”