TURIN - JUVENTUS coach Claudio Ranieri insisted on Monday that Italian teams do not feel inferior to their English counterparts, merely poorer.

The Italian giants host Chelsea in the Champions League second round, second leg at Turin's Stadio Olimpico on Tuesday looking to overturn a 1-0 first leg deficit.

And to qualify they will have to do something that no Italian side has managed against English opposition in the knock-out stages of the last two Champions League competitions: score a goal. But Ranieri insisted that this does not mean the Italians feel inferior to their English opponents.

'There's no inferiority complex in Italy, maybe there's an inferiority complex in terms of money. That's the only one there is and that's not really a complex, just a circumstance,' he said.

Earlier in the day Chelsea's Germany midfielder Michael Ballack had said the club had regained its fighting spirit - something they had lost under previous coach Luis Felipe Scolari. Ranieri agreed with Ballack's assessment and said that the west Londoners were back to their best.

'It's true, this (fighting spirit) is one part of the quality of the Chelsea players, while there are also their qualities as individual players,' he said. 'Chelsea are back and with the great investments they have made they have a great fighting machine.' Not so many years ago Juventus would have been seen as the favourites against Chelsea but the balance of power has shifted over the last few years.

Juve may have the greater European pedigree but English clubs have slowly pushed themselves to the forefront of continental competition. It's a far cry from when Juve captain and lynchpin Alessandro Del Piero was beginning his career in the mid 1990s.

He played in the Juventus team that did the double over Manchester United in the group stages of the 1997 Champions League, in which Juve went on to reach the final only to be stunned by Borussia Dortmund.

'Over the last few years there has been a profound change in English football,' he said. 'There has been a great investment, not just economically but also in the quality of players and coaches with many foreigners coming into the game.

'This has given them the ability to mix the typical English qualities with those of the other leagues around Europe so they have been able to improve a lot. Before they were strong in specific areas but now they are strong in almost all areas.' -- AFP