Juventus V Hellas Verona
Serie A – Week 18 [Sunday, 18th January – 19:45 GMT] – Juventus Stadium
Juventus
Juventus face Hellas for the second time in a week, just 3 days after their 6-1 Coppa Italia win against the side from Verona.
Max Allegri experimented with a 4-3-3 formation in the midweek fixture, opting to rest many of his key players ahead of the weekends Serie A match. Alvaro Morata got a rare start in the starting XI alongside forgotten man Sebastian Giovinco while Federico Mattiello and Kinglsey Coman also made cameos in a one-sided affair.
Carlos Tevez and Andrea Pirlo were both left out of the squad but are expected to return along with Gigi Buffon who will return in goal. Stephan Lichtsteiner and Patrice Evra will play in their customary full-back roles while Giorgio Chiellini is likely to start next to Leonado Bonucci.
Arturo was forced to watch the match from the sidelines following a late illness but he may recover in time to start the match. If not, Roberto Pereyra could easily take his place behind the front pair of Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente while Claudio Marchisio and Paul Pogba will sit either side of Pirlo in the midfield three.
Predicted Lineup
4-3-1-2 : Buffon; Lichtsteiner, Bonucci, Chiellini, Evra; Pirlo, Marchiso, Pogba; Pereyra; Tevez, Llorente
Injuries
Andrea Barzagli (Heel), Kwadwo Asamoah and Romulo (Both undergone knee surgery), Angerlo Ogbonna (Ankle), Arturo Vidal (Recovering from Tonsillitis)
Hellas Verona
Juve will have a look at the whole Hellas Verona roster as they’ll face them twice in four days. Without Juan Manuel Iturbe and Romulo (and Jorginho too, who left in January), Hellas Verona are no longer that explosive team that plays an exciting brand of football. They added some experienced players and they rely heavily on the veteran play to salvage some points here and here. They are substantially a standard low-table team that tries to navigate through adversities without sinking. They have succeeded so far: they have 21 points, six more than the 18th team in the table, but they are a distant cousin of last season’s squad, which was a legitimate contender for an Europa League spot until the final third of the season.
The main problem is that they haven’t been able to find the change-of-pace players they needed to replace the ones who left. Nico Lopez has had a good run two month ago (four goals in six matches) but he hasn’t scored since November 29. He’s their main offensive creator, but he’s wildly inconsistent. Luca Toni needs to be fed properly to unleash his old-man tricks in the box. The former Bayern Munich and Fiorentina striker is still getting it done at 37: he has scored seven goals in 19 matches and he’s still their focal point.
They are likely to be without several players in both matches: Bosko Jankovic, Mounir Obbadi, Artur Ionita, Juanito Gomez and Vangelis Moras have been nursing injuries for a while and they probably won’t be able to return in time. Lazaros Christodoulopoulos is questionable because of a back issue, but he might be available. These absences dramatically reduces the options at disposal of the coach Andrea Mandorlini so Juventus won’t square off against two completely different lineups in the two matches.
In the first one, some of the least used players will be inserted in the starting XI, like Pierluigi Gollini, Frederik Sorensen, Antonio Luna, Gustavo Campanharo, Mattia Valoti, Jacopo Sala, Javier Saviola or Nene, even though the word coming from Hellas is that they really want to pass the turn, so they could field their best lineup. However, they have been forced to use so many different formations because of injuries and inconsistent performances that they really don’t have a ‘best XI’. It will be interesting to see what Mandorlini does with Toni: the centre-forward can’t bear playing twice in four days and the coach will have to pick one. UPDATE: Toni is out with flu-like symptoms.
They have recently used 3-5-2 more than last season’s 4-3-3 due to injuries to the wingers and to the lack of quality upfront. They added a little wrinkle to their offensive strategy by acquiring Leandro Greco, who can play as advanced midfielder and support the strikers better. Mandorlini is starting to use Sala in the midfield more and he’s an interesting player. Differently from other small teams, Hellas Verona have a lot of quality in the midfield, which is now their main (only?) strength. Furthermore, they are tall, tough and physical, thanks to players like Rafa Marquez and Guillermo Rodriguez who add a lot of muscles.
On the road, they are in the middle of the pack, having won two games, drawn four times and lost thrice. Last year, when Hellas visited the Turin, Mandorlini built a bunker to avoid conceding, he might do the same again. In any case, Juventus will have to pay attention to the counter-attacking game, which, as usual, is the sole weapon of this kind of team against a top club. They have fast players (Nico Lopez clearly stands out, but also Sala, Valoti, Christodoulopoulos and Toni runs hard when he sees an opening to score) and they have the technical skills to find them in the open field. They shoot a lot from distance and it’s better not to be caught off guard. They don’t score a lot, but they are good in protecting the lead.
Predicted Lineup:
4-3-3: Benussi; Martic, Marquez, Rodriguez; Agostini, Sala, Tachtsidis, Campanharo, Lopez; Toni, Greco.
Injuries:
Jankovic (ankle), Obbadi (thigh), Ionita (thigh), Gomez (thigh), Moras (thigh)
Formation
Hello
we won;t see them .. to me, llorente is becoming a waste of space, I love the way Morata plays and they should be using him more, especially if they consider him a big part of their future (then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Juve isn’t playing him so when it comes time for the option for Real to buy him back, then Madrid won’t exercise the 30+ million dollar buy back)…..
I don’t mind seeing Tevez take a rest either, even for one game .. Seeing a strike partnership of Morata and Coman would be nice too, there’s no reason this shouldn’t be tried against one of the weaker opponents, like Verona this weekend.
Hello, im here and this is my cow
What’s her name? 😮
Milkshake
Best name ever for a cow!
No Gio for me, after forcing a free move to Toronto I don’t want to see him in a Juve shirt ever again. Coman and Mattiello however, yes please!
seems no one is here any more ……… discussions have the gone the way of the dodo bird.
Just out of curiosity,where do people go these days ? Is there another site you guys and girls find mor useful ? genuine curiosity on my part
In my case, hell no. This is the only Juve site for me. The core of this community is still lots of fun to watch the games with.
WHERES MARC, DUTCH?!
I don’t knooooooooow :'( I already have sleepless nights over it.
NOOO. At least for me. I no longer have a tv, so i cant watch games. I can go to the library, but i usually work, sooo thats why i dont comment much.
Idk where everybody has gone, i hope they arent cheating on this beautiful site!!
Im guessing my influence is important to this site, which is why thw vommenting has diminished :p
But if you want to start up convos, harshly criticize one of the fan faves. That always works for me when i want to start up a convo :p
Del Piero is a loser!!!!!!!!!
I find the site useful, I just miss the threads where conversations have momentum and I can make fun of Dutch.
Wut???
This is the only site I come to for Juve discussions and anything Juve related but lately the games have been on bad moments for me, haven’t been able to watch them and I doubt I’ll be able to see it today either
I like your animal metaphors
Looks like Allegri is going to stick with the 4-3-1-2, llorente and tevez up front – Hellas may change shape and formation to a 4-3-3 this time.
luca toni is over his flu so will probably start
Vidal recovering from tonsillitis – Ogbonna injured his ankle in the coppa game
This is the kind of game llorente needs to play and score goals in – Hellas defence is weak all over- If we don;t play as slowly as we normally do and kleep using the width like in midweek, we can get lots of joy out of them.
Elia just scored for Southampton.
This thread feels like a deja vu. Only difference is that it’s a league game.
Boom ! Elia
https://vine.co/v/OjvjdMQbKrx
You get a vote up and i don’t 🙁 The difference a video can make.
Dybala…..this kid. Vazquez, Pastore, Cavani
…..and we bought Amauri
even worse, we decided to keep amauri over trezeguet
I’m pretty sure Trezeguet wanted to leave
Haha it’s sad but you can only say this knowing what happened, at the time Amauri was playing really good
Great moment tomorrow for juve to go five points clear! Hope to see a bit of gio /coman again
Gio can fuck himself for all I care, forcing a free transfer move
Oh come on.. I’d rather believe Toronto didn’t want to pay Juve.. We all knew when his contract would end. How can you be mad at him?
Go said it himself, he had no intention whatsoever to sign an extension and at the same time refuses to leave in January, no matter who came knocking for him
[citation needed]
Lol I don’t know where to find this again now, it’s also somewhere on football-italia, they wrote “he had made it clear to the club that he has no intention to sign an extension”
ROMA DROPPED POINTS TO PALERMO!!! INTER DROPPED POINTS TO EMPOLI!!!
Great opportunity to go 5 points clear today!
Milan dropped points against Atalanta :p
Dunno why they can’t get results, they don’t have SUCH a bad team, but they struggle to make top 5 in Serie A.
https://www.sportsnet.ca/soccer/tfc-toronto-fc-sebastian-giovinco-mls-major-league-soccer-serie-a-juventus/
Ciao Seba : https://www.juvefc.com/toronto-fc-sign-juves-sebastian-giovinco/
TFC Stadium is literally a 10 minute walk from my house…
I dont know how im supposed to feel about giovinco going to tfc. I live in Toronto so im pretty happy hes coming but he was one of my favourite juve players since he was like 20 and i believed he couldve done some special things with this team. Im definately gonna try and get season tickets for toronto though
I expected more from him too. Looking back at what he achieved, I feel disappointed. I liked him a lot, he had skills which other players don’t have (speed, free kicks, dares to shoot instead of passing for the sake of it)
But this Toronto deal, no I don’t like Gio anymore and I hope never again to see him in a Juve jersey. At Parma all he gave us was trashtalk, which we kinda forgave him when he came back (and his agent was a bad influence there too) but he hardly delivered anything at Juve. Now forcing this free transfer to earn ridiculously much, not even moving in January for his and our own good sake..
So fuck off Gio and hope to never see you in black and white again
they’ve had him on the bench for 3 years, what do you want from the guy? he’s never complained publicly about it since he’s been here. He’s in his prime and he’s on the bench, I don’t blame him one bit… It’s fuckin ridiculous how we don’t rotate our squad enough, like fuck man .. Does Llorente have to start every fucking week with Tevez? They have all these strikers and they just rot, week in and week out.. it’s been like that for years. They even fucked Delpiero is his last year here (well, conte did anyways) by letting him rot on the bench all year long when he shouldn’t have had too .. Fuckin guy would go weeks without playing and for no good reason. Yes, I know they won the scudetto that year and went undefeated, but it was pure bullshit the way Conte handled that situation ………
Why play Gio if Llorente is just better? Gio always crumbled when we needed him most. He’s good against teams like this Hellas Verona, but so is anyone in the Juve squad.
There should be more rotation and especially for Del Piero, that was worse than bullshit how he got to play so little
Every time I saw Gio play, I saw that he gives all he has. Fans (including myself) were criticizing him because of his finishing, but you can’t criticize the mentality he shown every time. (Just compare his attitude to Vucinic’s.)
Would it really mean the difference if he left now for 7 million? That’s peanuts for a club like Juve.
Tevez also announced he won’t renew his contract, and most likely he will move back to Boca after it expires. I don’t think anyone would pay much for him now. Fuck him too?
I don’t criticise his finishing, just that he overall disappointed a lot, I don’t expect Gio to score cause he’s still no striker in my eyes but a winger/trequartista.
Forcing it that there is no transfer fee is what bothers me, he always acted as if he loves Juve and then this? He came through the youth system as well for that matter. No club love at all, despite his claims.
Not getting the 7mill is fine, but that it has to be this way I don’t like at all. Tevez is hardly a Juventino, we got him for practically nothing too. Plus Tevez actually delivered, Gio never did
How much do you think we could / should have got for him now? Would that make it up to you? I mean just think about it if we were the buyers. We would pay nothing, maybe offer to slap a worse player in the deal but that’s about it. A low realistic transfer fee would not make any difference for Juve overall.
If Juve wanted money for him, we should have sold him in the summer. No club love? I don’t understand what more would you want from him. IMO he did all he could for the team, he’s just not good enough.
I think Gio wanted to leave because he wants to play. Now he can play in a place where he will be the #1 star. Juve simply let him go.
Again Peter, I don’t care about the money itself, it’s refusing to leave now. If he just wants to play, then why doesn’t he move now already? Juve doesn’t rescind the contract or something, they would have tried to get SOMETHING out of it. Gio made sure that didn’t happen by refusing to leave and signing a contract elsewhere anyway.
I believe Juve tried to sell him, but maybe the change of coach made a difference? We can’t know.
Anyway, we’ll have to disagree on this I think, but I will not miss Gio at all. He can do whatever he likes in some shitty mls team, as long as I don’t see him in a Juve shirt again
I won’t miss him neither, because he just couldn’t make it… But saying “fuck off Gio” is too strong IMO.
I just don’t understand why are you targeting Gio in this. Toronto didn’t give an offer for Juve as far as we know. They decided to try to get him on a Bosman and they did. I don’t think you can expect a player to say to his (possible) future employer “O-okay but what about Juve?”.
If there’s anyone to blame, then it is Juve, because everybody knew when his contract will end, yet they didn’t extend it, or didn’t sell him when they could.
I don’t mean it in a way I would shoot him on sight, I just express my dislike of his actions strongly. He could have just left in January, make Juve a little fee, whatever the fee would be and start earning his millions right away. And start playing as a starter, if that really is what he craves. But he doesn’t.
What reason does he have to stay at Juve? He isn’t going to play more now that he’s leaving for nothing. Also not earning anything extra. So it can’t be for those reasons, what possible reasons are left?
All it shows is that he wants to get a Scudetto on his record for which he did nothing to win it, sit on his ass for the rest of the season and then earn millions for acting to be a great player in the MLS.
That is why I say, fuck off Gio. Don’t be hypocrite and just go if you aren’t motivated/ know you’re not good enough to be a starter here.
I think his goal wasn’t “leaving”, it was “leaving to a place he would like”. If that place does not want to spend money on him just to sign him now, they won’t. If any club would come to an agreement now with Juve about his price, they would have to make a deal with Gio too. If there were news about how Juve agreed with any club and yet Gio refuses to sign for them, I would somewhat understand you, but I haven’t read any of that.
The MLS starts in March if I’m correct, so they don’t really need him right now. Until then, he can live and play in the city he grew up in. After all, he is a human being too, these things (we usually forget about), matter for him too.
Sure he wants another Scudetto, but so does Storari. He is here and ready whenever he is called upon and so is Gio. He is not playing because the coach believes he is not the best player for the spot. This is why I wrote all that about his attitude. Every time he is subbed in, he does what he can. He could be dragging himself around the pitch with a bored face, but he doesn’t. He works his ass off instead, because he respects the club or whatever reason he has. So I respect him too, and wish him luck.
He still wants to prove himself, I don’t see how he is going to do that in the MLS. Why wouldn’t he move to one of the proposed clubs instead, like Fiorentina, Torino(same city right, he probably wouldn’t even need to move) or Tottenham? He’ll play more there than he does here, that much is for sure. He refuses those clubs. The money is probably more shiny than proving himself. Not that I’ll blame him for that, I’d also think twice if someone offers me like, I don’t know, 5times what I earn now.
Don’t know when MLS starts, it’s a weird date like the Russian league, could be in March yeah. Storari has the same fate as every second goalkeeper, that’s just not a viable argument. It’s like Padoin who is also doing jack shit, or Pepe. Sitting on their ass and win stuff, can’t be easier than that. They don’t complain about it, Gio (or at least his agent) do complain. If they don’t even show motivation at Juve you get fucking frozen out of the team, simple as that.
I disagree with what he did and I’m not changing my opinion mate, refusing to extend and refusing to leave is an asshole attitude. I don’t care how hard he tried to be a first team player, it’s not Juve’s fault he fails whenever we need him most
Fiorentina, Torino: Come on, those are Juve’s rivals, I couldn’t imagine any loyal Juve player there.
Tottenham: No basically guaranteed first team spot. Why would he take it if he wants to play?
Padoin also does what Gio does. Whenever he is subbed on, he works his ass off. It is nowhere near Juve standards, but you can’t blame the player for being here. I always blamed Conte for subbing him in, and now I blame Allegri every time I see him play, but not the player. Pepe was injured, that doesn’t count, and it would have been a huge dick move from Juve if we kicked him out during his injury. I don’t think you can question his motivation if you watch him play.
I read about complaints from Gio’s agent, but never from him. An agent’s job is to get what the player wants, so they shittalk everywhere to get it. Whether he wanted an extension or wanted to leave when the agent complained, we won’t find out anyway.
Gio isn’t loyal anyway so fits him right eh! ;P Tottenham plays in the PL, Toronto is MLS, if you want to show you’re still somewhat of a player, you don’t go to the MLS. Padoin is a pain to watch, I will cheer on the day he leaves, same with Pepe. But at least I like Pepe, can’t say that about Padoin
Okay let’s agree on this: nobody likes to watch Padoin in Juve. 😛
Except maybe himself and family.
That is something we all agree on xD It does give fun facts though, like him having won more trophies than Totti, while nobody will remember Padoin in a few years and Totti is hailed as a legend
I hope one day he will score a brace against Inter for example, and winning us the game, so we could say: “Remember that ONE time?”
Sounds like a story you’d tell your grandchildren over 60 years 😛 “Listen up boys, I will tell you a story about that time when Padoin scored a brace..”
i think he just wasn’t mentally strong enough to make it at a big club. we spent quite a bit of money in trying to develop him and it didn’t pay off.
they gave him 30 million for 5 years .. Plus all sorts of incentives and he can manage his own image rights.. The way I see it, he is now the best player in MLS, he could be a star in this league and making money hand over fist.. MLS will market him as one of their premier players, along with Villa, Bradley, Dempsey, Lampard, Gerard etc ..
being the best in mls is hardly something to be proud of. toronto is not a big club and him making a boat load of money doesn’t mean he became a good player
In MLS they’re a big club. they spend the most out of anybody,
Spending doesn’t make you a big club, mls is for players who are about to retire
Money wise, thats a great deal and he will become the best player over there. Nothing to brag about, but he ll enjoy his self. He should be around his prime right now, but he seldom showed mental stability since his return.
I think the problem started when we sent him on loan the 2 nd time. That was bs. He deserved playing time. Everytime he stepped on the pitch, he would shine.
I wish he would try a more challenging route. Hes at the age where his football should be at his peak, not getting ready to retire.
Berardi with two more goals
Plus Zaza assist
Morata is playing instead of Llorente.
Morata over Llorente
Pereyra in for Vidal
Caceres in for Lichtsteiner
“This will be a different match.” Yeah right…..
Missed first goal, 2-0 already lol.
Ruthless juve are ruthless
Morata was key to both goals
Pogba is just……i’m lost for words
who scored for Juve? Just tuned in..
pogba and tevez..
So good to be witnessing the rise of Pogba.
I hope he stays for a long time. it’s not gonna be easy for juve to keep him though.
Morata working so hard.. I really hope he decides to stay with us
i have mixed feelings about him. I rather see Zaza as our future attacker
One does not exclude the other 😉 With Tevez soon departing.. and Llorente isn’t getting younger either
you are right. But dont you think that they are to similiar to play side by side?
That could be true, I’d like to witness it someday though. With Berardi behind them.
im with you on the berardi thing. or in a 4-3-3 with
Coman – Zaza – Berardi. This could be lethal in a few years
He did choose for us, it’s up to Madrid now, they have to decide whether or not they use the buyback clause 🙁
He has the last say in this, fortunately. That’s what i heard.
Pereyra!!!!
A substitution wouldn’t hurt, Allegri.
Pepe and coman please
Padoin coming on because what’s a game without Padoin.
Lol chiellini
Match review over here : https://www.juvefc.com/juventus-4-0-hellas-verona-match-review/
Jump over and discuss the game –
Player ratings here : https://www.juvefc.com/juventus-v-hellas-verona-player-ratings-week-19/