Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri refused to be too downbeat despite seeing his team beaten 3-0 by Hamburg on Sunday.
Jose Paolo Guerrero took advantage of a glaring mistake by the Bianconeri defence to fire his side into the lead in the 19th minute before Ivica Olic's late double completed the rout.
But Ranieri, with a sly dig at Inter Milan boss Jose Mourinho, the man who replaced him at Chelsea, insists he is still pleased with his team.
"I'm always content," he said. "I'm the opposite of Mourinho - I don't need to win to be sure of what I'm doing.
"It's okay even if we take several blows. Last year we had some and we reacted well.
"I don't look for victory to be sure of myself. I look to change the squad, to put them in difficulty sometimes so they know how to react because they have to know how to be good in the bad times too.
"What's important now is this mentality we have. You work, you look, you progress step by step."
Juve, who play their first Serie A game on August 31, are a lot further behind in their preparations than Hamburg whose first Bundesliga game is two weeks earlier - and it showed.
While Juve have cause to feel hard done by as two late goals made the scoreline an inaccurate reflection of the game, they were at times overrun by Hamburg, as Ranieri freely admits.
"It's not hard to accept such a heavy defeat because when you go abroad and face well organised teams when you're not well prepared yet you can suffer as we suffered," he said.
"They played much better than us. Anyone with their eyes open can see that. Hamburg played really well.
"Everyone played well, working hard even off the ball."
Ranieri chose to field a more inexperienced team than the one which beat Arsenal on Saturday, and admitted he had expected his youngsters to struggle.
"We had a very young team," he continued. "So it was obvious we were going to suffer, especially having seen how Hamburg put Real Madrid in difficulty yesterday.
"But I wanted to give everyone 90 minutes as a run-out and to see how they could do.
"We still had a couple of good chances."