Pjanic: "In Cardiff we believed. Cristiano Ronaldo? Allegri had a trick to make me take the free-kicks"

The backstory told by the Bosnian about free-kicks during his time at Juventus

Speaking at the Festival dello Sport in Trento, former Roma, Juventus and Bosnia midfielder Miralem Pjanic also shared a few revealing stories from his career, especially from his time at Juventus.

One in particular stood out: the tale of Cristiano Ronaldo and free-kicks, Pjanic's speciality, which forced Allegri to come up with a specific ploy just to get him to take them.

“At Cardiff we believed in it”

"I'm sorry I didn't win anything with Roma, we were up against an incredible Juventus side. Then I moved to Juventus and I have to say we were incredibly strong.

Allegri changed me, I owe him a lot. Of course, the wound of Cardiff remains open. Sometimes I still have nightmares about my shot being saved by Keylor Navas in the final. It hurts, the 4-1 scoreline does not reflect the match, it should not have ended like that. The 3-1 hurt us, but it is a great disappointment because we believed in it. I wasn't afraid of facing them, we felt strong and sure that we could take them on.

It was not, however, the strongest Juventus side. Two years later, though, we had an incredible squad. We had two teams that could both have won the Serie A title"

Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi

"I played with a huge number of phenomenal players in my career, above all Messi and CR7. Who do I choose between the two aliens? I say Leo. His class is something that can't be explained. He is a man with a gift from God. He made difficult things look easy, incredible. Cristiano is special too, eh... with him you always started 1-0 up. He is obsessed with goals. He has a mental strength that should be taught in schools. His story is an ode to never giving up and always wanting more"

Set-pieces and Allegri's strategy

"But with Ronaldo it was really difficult to take free-kicks... once he set his mind on it, there was no way around it. You had to get him off the pitch to be able to take one... Allegri had a trick. When he won a free-kick himself, he would immediately send the physios on to the pitch, so Ronaldo was forced to go off and I could take it. I remember it happened in a match against Napoli, I took it and scored, so thanks, Max!"