Inter coach confident of title chances despite loss to Juventus

• Source: Global Times
• [08:50 February 15 2011]
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Juventus' Alessandro Matri (left) is congratulated by teammates Luca Toni after scoring. Photo: CFP

Inter Milan coach Leonardo claimed his team's title hopes hadn't been affected despite their 1-0 defeat at Juventus leaving them eight points off top.

But having won nine out of his 11 games in charge of Inter, Leonardo is still feeling confident.

January transfer window signing Alessandro Matri scored the only goal of the game on the half hour, heading home unmarked from seven yards after Ivan Cordoba misjudged his jump.

Inter created several chances late on to equalize and Samuel Eto'o wasted the best, hitting the bar from five yards with an empty net to aim at.

"We struggled to create chances in the first half, Juve played a great game, they were compact and difficult to break down," said Leonardo.

"But we played the whole of the second half in attack, in their half."

"Looking at the results of the last few weeks the table changes a lot, we've had a good run to get into the fight. There are still many games to go, 14 for us and 13 for the others."

"There are positives, I'm satisfied with the second half."

"We started slowly in the first but in the second we fought to the end, we tried every way to score. It's not a decisive defeat otherwise all our other wins would have also been decisive."

Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini admitted that Juve had ridden their luck at times.

"We defended well in the second half but honestly we could have drawn, although we had lots of good chances."

Agencies