Trezeguet names best team-mates and toughest foes

Former Juventus striker David Trezeguet says seeing some of the world's best players staying on after training at the Turin club to do extra practice inspired him to be a better player.

Trezeguet spent 10 seasons with the Serie A club between 2000 and 2010, staying loyal even as Juve were relegated to Serie B in 2006 amid the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal.

He won two Italian league titles with the club in 2002 and 2003, and played alongside some of the world's best footballers including Zinedine Zidane and Alessandro Del Piero.

Trezeguet said seeing even the best players in the world doing extra training is what has stuck with him, and helped him thrive as a striker in a notoriously defensive league.

He told Sky Sport: "At Juve, I learned to always want to win and be a protagonist. The Italian one is the toughest league of all for the attackers. Personally, I was impressed to see many players of the highest level, such as Del Piero, Zidane, stopping after training to improve."

Trezeguet scored 123 goals in 214 Serie A appearances, and came up against some of the best and toughest defenders in world football.

Of all his battles with backlines across Italy, the Frenchman remembers his bouts with the central defenders of AC Milan and Lazio as being his most bruising encounters.

Trezeguet said: "In Serie A there were people like [Paolo] Maldini and [Alessandro] Costacurta, who were certainly very aggressive defenders, but the worst pair was that of Lazio with Fernando Couto and [Sinisa] Mihajlovic.

"I worked a lot on the mental approach of the defenders, I was talking so much with [Ciro] Ferrara, [Paolo] Montero and [Mark] Iuliano. They told me where the defenders could be wrong and their suggestions fueled my growth"

Trezeguet also enjoyed a successful international career, scoring 34 goals in 71 appearances - the most famous being the golden goal to beat Italy in the final of Euro 2000 and complete the international double for France, having been part of the triumphant World Cup squad on home soil two years earlier.

However he also endured international heartbreak, missing the crucial penalty in the 2006 World Cup final shoot-out, allowing the Italians to get their revenge in Germany.

Trezeguet said the entire tournament had been difficult, coming the same summer as Calciopoli, but that the enture experience had been good for him in the long run.

He said: "Until then, it had not been a very fun World Cup for me. This is the year when Juve was relegated to Serie B.

"I took my responsibilities. Each penalty has its own story. The one against Buffon, I hit it well, but unfortunately, that's how it was. These difficulties made me stronger, more mentally strong."