Juventus captain Danilo explained why Juve’s 1-1 draw with Inter ended in a brawl and the decision to send off Romelu Lukaku was correct. The match was marred by ugly scenes at the full-time whistle, with Lukaku, Juan Cuadrado and Samir Handanovic all being shown red cards. The suggestion was that Lukaku’s second booking was for celebrating in front of the Juventus curva, who had allegedly been racially abusing him at points during the match. Speaking with Mediaset (as quoted by TuttoJuve), Danilo explained why centre-back Bremer still has a lot to learn and why it’s not his responsibility alone to manage his teammates in tense situations:
What happened in the final brawl?
“There’s nothing complicated, Lukaku scored, he made the gesture of shutting up to our Curva, the referee’s job is easy, it’s normal to caution him, he already had a yellow, the second yellow, and he was sent off correctly in my opinion.”
Then there was a brawl in the middle of the pitch and you all ran into the changing room.
“It’s Juve-Inter, the semi-final of the Coppa Italia, it’s not that it’s a normal match, tempers are always heightened. there’s emotion, there’s rivalry, so I think it’s a normal thing. It’s clear that respect must be above everything, but I think it’s normal in this type of event. Then I always say that we can’t afford to waste energy with these things, we have to focus on the pitch, on what we didn’t do well today, because there are still 90 minutes left to go to get the final.”
How is Bremer after that naive foul?
“What can I say, he knows he caught the ball with his hand, it’s part of a path of a young man who however has a lot of quality, he has already shown all that he can be, but he is still young, he still has to learn a lot of things, we are by his side to help him. And in any case when you draw and lose it is the responsibility of the whole team, not of Bremer because he fouled with his hand. We equalised, but there are still 90 minutes left to go to take the final.”
If I were you, I’d go and talk to Cuadrado and tell him: ‘What did you care about going and talking to Lukaku and messing around?’ It all stemmed from there.
“Cuadrado is 34 years old, almost 35, we are more than 30 people, I am not the only one responsible for taking Cuadrado away from there. He knows, of course we will talk internally, but I’m not going to tell you this, it’s internal stuff . He knows what his responsibility is within the team and we will certainly talk’.
