Juventus spirit credited with success

John Elkann has credited the 'Juventus spirit' as one of the key reasons behind the club's successful Scudetto defence this season.

Elkann is chairman of Exor, an investment company controlled by the Agnelli family, which owns Juventus, and is pleased by Antonio Conte's results over the past two campaigns.

"We've had two winning seasons and it's our ambition to develop even further next year," Elkann said at an Exor shareholders meeting.

"Nowadays a great deal of importance is placed on the ability to have great stars, Juventus have many of these and they are strong together.

"This is the Juventus spirit: a strong team which also wants to develop its own players. We've got Marchisio, Giovinco, Marrone and De Ceglie who come from our youth academy, representing almost 20% of the 25-man first team squad.

"Few teams in Italy possess such an important number of homegrown players."

Elkann also commented on the recently played UEFA Champions League final contest by two German sides and won by Bayern Munich.

"It was interesting to see two German teams in this year's Champions League final. Effort needs to be made by the Lega Calcio in order for us have stronger Italian teams in Europe," he said.

"We need to try and work out how the Italian football system can progress and evolve as we've seen in other countries."

Juve did make it to the quarter-finals of this season's Champions League only to be knocked out at this stage by eventual champions Bayern.