Football
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Allegri not thinking about deficit to Napoli: 'We worry about ourselves'

Juventus boss Massimiliano Allegri isn't worried about his team's five-point gap behind Serie A leaders Napoli after his team lost 2-1 to Lazio.

A brace from Ciro Immobile cancelled out Douglas Costa's first-half opener before Juve substitute Paulo Dybala saw his last-gasp penalty saved at the Allianz Stadium.

It was a first home league loss for the six-in-a-row Scudetto winners in over two years after Udinese clinched a 1-0 victory in August 2015.

Regarding Dybala, Allegri said, "Paulo has to remain calm. He will continue to take penalties, as long as he returns to taking them with venom. We have now, however, lost five points because of penalties.

"These are moments that happen in a player's career, but they just need to get over them and start doing things right again.

"He did not start because he came back late [from international duty with Argentina] and only trained yesterday.''

On his team's position in the table, Allegri was unconcerned and pointed out that the Serie A season is long and that two years ago they were 12 points off the top spot early on before coming back to win the league.

He said: "This has not been a decisive match. We have to worry about ourselves and work to fix our mistakes.''

His opposite number, Simone Inzaghi, will now cautiously permit talk of Lazio winning their first Serie A title since 2000 after the big victory in Turin.

Inzaghi, who took charge in the summer of 2016 when Marcelo Bielsa left the head coach's role after just a week, was so excited by Saturday night's triumph he embellished Juve's prior record here.

"It's never easy to win at this stadium,'' he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. "There's a reason why no one had succeeded here for three years.

"Can we now talk about winning the league? It's fair that the lads are enjoying that talk as at the beginning of the season people were saying we'd finish ninth or 10th.

"Now I think it's right that people are considering us. These guys have done something that will go down in history.''

Come full-time the Bianconeri were joined on 19 points by Lazio, who placed a modest fifth last season.

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