Hodgson enjoys Juve rivalry
Thursday 18 March, 2010
Former Inter Coach Roy Hodgson admits the rivalry with Juventus lives on. “I’ve tried to like them, but beating Juve is still special.”
Fulham seemed down and out when David Trezeguet’s strike 100 seconds into the game put the Bianconeri 4-1 up on aggregate, but the Cottagers fought back to book their spot in the Europa League quarter-finals.
“You’ve got to remember I worked for Inter for two years and we’re not the very best of friends with Juve!” he told ESPN after the 4-1 result.
“I’ve tried harder to like them and love them, but beating Juventus remains something very special for me.”
Fulham were already at a disadvantage after a 3-1 first leg defeat and allowed Trezeguet to score almost immediately.
“We tried to give them an even bigger lift by conceding a goal after a minute and 40 seconds. I was very impressed with the way the players put that behind them and carried on playing.
“Fortunately we got an equaliser fairly early on and then they had a player sent off, which does help, but I thought throughout the 90 minutes we really played well.
“I still thought we could win the game and that was our task. When you’ve lost 3-1 away and concede a goal it’s going to be unbelievably uphill. When it’s against Juventus, the slope gets even steeper.
“I still thought we’d do enough to maybe win the game. When we equalised and then scored the second, I thought then who knows, we could still do something here if we played the second half as well as we had the first. Fortunately that’s what we did.”
Fabio Cannavaro’s harsh red card after 27 minutes inevitably opened the floodgates to the Juventus defence and Jonathan Zebina followed in stoppages.
“It was a fantastic team performance. Mark Schwarzer had a save to make in the first half from Diego, but apart from that and the goal, he was a passenger. The Juventus goalkeeper made four outstanding saves,” insisted Hodgson.
“It was a great night of football, the crowd was fantastic and many of them will remember this night for a long time to come. I know we will.”