Told new players to remain calm: Juventus' Pjanic

Juventus midfielder Miralem Pjanic has revealed that they advised their new recruits to remain calm for the first few months to be able to adapt to the style and standard of the record Italian football champions.

Douglas Costa and Federico Bernardeschi supplied the goods for the Bianconeri on Saturday evening in a 1-0 win over Cagliari away -- the former setting up the latter for the only goal of the game.

Bernardeschi joined Juventus from Fiorentina, while Brazilian Costa is on loan from Bayern Munich. The two new players are now appearing regularly for Juventus after earning the trust of chief coach Massimiliano Allegri.

"They made the difference today," Pjanic told Juventus website. "The first few months at Juve are always tricky, you need a bit of time.

"We told the new arrivals to stay calm and their quality will help us to win many more trophies."

Bosnian international Pjanic stressed the importance of Juventus' 1-0 win away against Cagliari within the context of the league campaign.

Following the win, second-placed Juventus trail league leaders Napoli by a point. They lead third-placed Inter Milan by eight points and fourth-placed Lazio by 10 points.

"It's three massive points at a difficult place to play," the midfielder explained. "Every season you get matches like these, where the only thing that matters is getting the three points. It was a proper battle -- Cagliari may not have had many shots but they caused problems for us.

"It was important to stay one point behind Napoli, who are doing amazing things. We've done it before and now we'll try to overtake them again."

Now the team can look forward to some time off and a bit of rest. Juventus' next encounter is against Genoa on January 22.

"The team has been picking up some huge results recently," Pjanic stressed. "Confidence is high and we want to achieve even greater things.

"We'll rest over the next few days and then we'll be ready to tackle the second half of the season in Serie A, the Coppa Italia and the Champions League."

--IANS

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