Juventus conquered relegation battlers Sassuolo 3-1 today, despite the strong fighting spirit displayed by the upstart hosts. Simone Zaza took the lead for them after only nine minutes, aided by a deflection from Angelo Ogbonna. Juventus, ever the Scudetto winning side, kept calm and continued working towards a goal. It took 35 minutes, but Carlos Tevez created some magic and equalized for Juventus, assisted by Claudio Marchisio.
The game stayed even for a bit, but eventually Juventus picked things up in Sassuolo’s half. A Carlos Tevez sliding dispossession led the ball to Andrea Pirlo, who played a beautiful through ball to Claudio Marchisio. Marchisio poked the pass on with ease to give Juve a 2-1 lead. Marchiso had now bagged an assist and a goal.
Juventus stayed in control from there, and Fernando Llorente managed to score a goal – from right in front of goal, of course, he is a real fox in the box – to recover from what had been otherwise a poor game for the Spaniard. Stephan Lichtsteiner, Arturo Vidal, and, Leo Bonucci all saw some time in the second half. I assume this was to whet their appetite for the Europa League match against Benfica this Thursday.
Credit due to Sassuolo, who played well throughout the match but especially during the first half. For a team staring down the barrel of relegation, they weren’t very fazed by Juventus. With the win, Juventus are now eight points ahead of Roma, and with 93 points this season have set a new Juventus club record for most points in a season. This graph, by @1897j, shows how Juventus have stayed the course for the Scudetto this season, despite the very impressive campaign of A.S. Roma. It’s an interesting look at a now record-breaking season for Juventus.
Buffon: 6.5. He was beaten on that first goal, though the Ogbonna deflection helped, but recovered from it with a number of fine saves.
Chiellini: 6.5. Secure performance from Chiellini. With Ogbonna struggling at times and Barzagli a bit out of form, Chiellini had to be the rock tonight, and he delivered.
Ogbonna: 5.5. His night started poorly with that deflection on the goal, he was later bossed around by Simone Zaza again, and he seemed very shaky at times when called upon. He did have a team leading seven clearances, but many of these were “oh crap here’s the ball I better get rid of it as soon as possible” clearances, at least I thought so. I still have hope for Ogbonna, he’s somewhat young, and Bonucci had a rough first year and a half at Juve as well.
Bonucci (74′): 6. Speak of the devil, Bonucci only played about 20 minutes. Still, he was three for four on long balls and put in a solid set ahead of the important Benfica game.
Barzagli: 6. He didn’t make any mistakes, but Barzagli is clearly not at top form right now. He played fine but when you are used to Barzagli being an absolute stud in defense, a plain performance like today’s can be disappointing. He is has only recently returned to fitness after an injury, so it is probably just a matter of shaking off the rust.
Isla: 6. Not a great game by Isla by any measure. Had a few dangerous passes but compared to Lichtsteiner, who came on later, he wasn’t very effective. Isla has been much improved this season but he has still not been able to put together a run of good performances for Juve. I fear that, if he stays at Juve, he may be forever relegated to a vice-Lichtsteiner. We will have to wait and see.
Lichtsteiner (63′): 7. Assisted on Llorente’s goal with a nice cross. Seemed super comfortable in possession today and if he plays like that versus Benfica, our attack will be very strong on the right side.
Asamoah: 6.5. Another fine performance in what has been a stellar five months for Asamoah. Ghana will be hoping he keeps up this form through the summer, as he is one of Juve’s best players at the moment.
Pirlo: 7. Easily controlled Juve’s attack today, and his assist for Marchisio’s goal was superb. Another game where Pirlo is critical for Juventus.
Vidal (80′): s.v. It’s good to see Vidal playing after the scare with his knee. I’m still not really sure what happened with #KneeGate, but hopefully Vidal is fit and prepared to play, as we need him versus Benfica.
Marchisio: 7. Juve’s midfield was very strong today and Marchisio played a huge part in that. Troubled Gianluca Pegolo a few times and broke through with that goal, in addition to assisting Tevez’ goal. A very good match for Il Principino.
Pogba: 6. After performing well recently, Pogba had a dry game today. Didn’t do very much in attack but he fulfilled his responsibilities in defense. Took a shot on goal but it lacked the power of a true Pogbomb. Pogba’s definitely out of that funk he fell into earlier in the year, but we haven’t see “Pogboom” too much in 2014.
Tevez: 7.5. His goal really broke the game open. While Marchisio fed him a nice pass, Tevez created that goal for himself. It was a magnificent shout, as we have seen before this season. Now that he has broken his European scoring duck, I am hoping to see Tevez really produce on Thursday.
Llorente: 7. He was not good before he scored, but as I always say a striker’s job is to score goals. Thus, you can’t really say Llorente had a bad game.
Haha, great article! Especially liked the part where the team vs Chelsea was mentioned, as I said pretty much the same thing yesterday 😀 Great article, which should be read by the pessimistic fans! Marotta is a great manager, we’re lucky to have him rebuild Juve!
thanks for reading
thank you for writing it 🙂 you always seem to hit the nail on the head!
Hopefully we can end season with 100 points and win Europa League.
that is certainly the goal right now…
Apparently we have put in a complaint to uefa about enzo perez’s elbow to chiellini’s face. Uefa’s disciplinary committee has given benfica 24 hours to respond. Uefa will then make their decision tomorrow
Benfica’s sporting director has come out and said that “uefa is trying to ensure juventus access to the final in their stadium”
Yeah just read it too, cause UEFA only reacted really late on our complaint. Why does everyone need to pull us in controversy
Small teams are run by small minded people. That’s why they will never be great.
Small team?
yeah, small team. This isn’t the 60s or 70s, Eusebio isn’t there anymore. Outside of Portugal they are nobody. Even if they win an EL they are still nobody.
loool, and how are we outside Italy these days? we achieve the quarter finals against Bayern last year, the champions. They achieve the quarter finals two years ago against Chelsea, the champions.
A lot more people kno juventus than benfica. Our decline came in 06. We are on the rise again but itll take time. We have footballing legends like buffon and pirlo. Benfica have some great players but no legends. Benfica is also a selling club. Di maria, david luiz, ramires, matic etc were all sold. Gaitan, markovic, garay and others will be sold too eventually.
so? did i said that Benfica is more known than us? and that’s nothing to do with what you were saying. Di Maria? Luiz? Matic? they’re not legends. i’m just saying that Benfica is far from being a small team.
I didnt say theyre legends. Theyre good players who benfica sold which helps cement their status as a feeder club to bigger teams
Portuguese teams are a great intermediate (think that’s the word) between non european players to big teams
they are but so is udinese. problem is, they lack the ambition to compete among the best. that is why they sell all their big players instead of keeping them and becoming a powerhouse.
Udinese?! not in the same level
You really don’t know much about Juve do you? A quick wikipedia search will be very enlightening for you.
what did i said wrong about Juve? i just said that we achieve the quarter finals last year… is that wrong?
It sounded to me as if you are saying that Benfica is better than Juve.
no, never said that. Benfica is a great team, but i still hate them
oh ok. Sorry, I get very passionate when defending la signora.
me too, but i always try to be a imparcial football fan when arguing
lol, yeah i have a hard time with that.
Benfica is the most widely supported club in the world
The most widely supported Portuguese club
no, worldwide
fail. Or was that an attempt at sarcasm at your own comment? Benfica is definitely not the most widely supported club.
they have the Guiness record of it. but who am i to say that
” The most widely supported football club is Sport Lisboa e Benfica, Portugal, which has 160,398 paid-up members,” That has no bearing toward actual fan base. I suspect the most widely supported team in the world is Real Madrid, and most of its supporters cant afford to be paid-up members.
Most of these small teams are run by multi-millionaire businessmen.. Hardly small minded..
they have a small team mentality though. they believe everyone is out to hurt their team and bigger teams get favors
Benfica isn’t really a small team though
I didnt say they are. They just have a small team mentality. Like napoli. Benfica are a historically bigger team than napoli but they havent been a european force like we have in the past. Faced with teams like us or rm, bayern etc they use a small team mentality.
Juve only has 2 CL titles. Thats hardly a european force.
5 runner ups. we have flopped in finals but 7 final appearances is nothing to scoff at
One can be rich and educated and still be ignorant. I call that being small minded.
If they had been small minded they’d hardly be where they are today..
Teams like Benfica became great because they had ownership with lots of money, yes, and their players from their overseas colonies were the best.
Every big team is big because of some reason
yeah, I’m not judging them. They did everything right.
the only thing i want right now is to win them next match. can’t wait! Pirlo free kick goal is my wish
Most rich and educated people are ignorant as fuck..
not most
I completely disagree..
Juve are the scapegoats for everything in Europe.
didn’t you know? Juve is the reason the Euro is crumbling and Greece has been mired in debt.
Juve was the reason world war 1 and 2 started and will be the reason for world war 3 in the future.
Juve was also the reason the dinosaurs died.
everybody is saying that
all my friends here that don’t could care less about who wins thusday now want Benfica to rape Juve because of our complaint
Its a pretty legit complaint, you’re not supposed to elbow people..
i know, i’m just reading the news 😛
So Madrid buttraping Bayern.
Can’t believe they trashed Bayern by 5. Uefa super cup Real vs Juventus again :D.
Hopefully, they are the teams I want to win the 2 competition.. We always do well vs real too so if we can beat them it should hopefully make other teams take note and give our team a huge European boost
Good to know juve are still on for being the first team to win back to back CL titles.. All we have to do now is win a first.. Then a second the following season.
Shouldnt be long. If we can dominate Italy physically and mentally drained, why cant we dominate europe when 100%
because we have 1 winger who has been injured for almost 2 seasons now and isn’t good enough anyway to start a CL game.
I was making a statement, not asking a question :p
But yea, with a similar tactical approach we had in 2012, i dont see why we couldnt dominate europe.
2012 was amazing. We played such entertaining football in the 4-3-3
Entertaining yes, but a lot of games ended in a draw
Thats cuz we had players like matri and pepe up front and vidal was still settling in to italy. If we get creative players like sanchez or shaqiri or gaitan or di maria and put them with llorente or immobile up front, itd be a far superior team
Sanchez and Di Maria.. Makes the mouth water just thinking about it. Especially with the Italian presence of immobile in the centre
Can Sanchez play on the left? I also really want both if it were possible.
Sanchez, di maria, shaqiri, and gaitan can all play on both wings
Still their favorite position is on the right wing, but i guess a true professional can play any position he’s asked to.
As much as I want di maria, his performances this season have practically sealed his place in RM. But we can always hope for an august 31 özil-esque signing cant we?
Exactly my point. I just want to point out that for me 2012 was amazing because we won the scudetto after 2 consecutive 7th places, in a new stadium, and still had Alex back then. However, all these goalless draws didn’t really feel that amazing for me. That was the only frustrating thing about that season.
There arent words to describe how we played in 2012. Watching each week sent my soul to the stars; it didnt feel real. Our 2012 team in my opinion was just or even more entertaining than Barcas team in 2009(i would say more). if Marotta obtains the right players that will accommodate with Conte s tactical desires; the sky wont be the limit, itll just be the beginning.
And 2014 brutally forced your soul back to earth? xD
You do know that RM won 5 in a row between 1956-60. I think it counts.
but that wasnt during the champions league era.
That wasn’t the CL..
true
It counts as the CL but yea its not this edition. We came so close in the late 90s in this edition
why so much complain and envy about the others achievements? we should try to win 10 in a row and not cry because the others have more
No one’s crying. All they said was that Madrid technically haven’t won 5 CL’s in a row.
yea, three finals in a row. So close.
Its still not the CL so we are on for it!
the trophy is considered the same. but yea, im hoping we’ll be able to be the first
Same trophy level but still not the CL trophy
Like Marc said, that wasn’t the CL. It’s the same cup, but since it’s called CL no one has won it twice in a row.
So i’m not the only one who was hoping for Bayern to lose for that reason? 😀
I mentioned Eusebio in a comment earlier which prompted me to learn a little more about him. 1. He passed away in January. RIP.
2. When he was 15 a former Juventus GK turned scout saw him playing in Mozambique in Sporting Club’s feeder club and recommended him to Juve. Juventus made an approach for Eusebio but his mother would not have it.
Imagine if Eusebio had played for Juventus. Can’t say he’d be more of a legend, as he is rightly one, but would have been awesome for Juve.
Yea i saw a documentary on that once. We were close to signing, not one, but two of some of the greatest Portuguese players(Ronaldo being the other). Thats wouldve been so awesome for Juves prestige.
he actually lived here in Toronto for a while, there’s a huge portuguese community here ..
Tuttojuve’s predicted lineup based on today’s training:
Buffon; Caceres, Bonucci, Chiellini; Licht, Vidal, Pirlo, Pogba, Asamoah; Tevez, Llorente
Normally id want barzagli over caceres for the tough teams but considering benfica’s game is based on counter attacking with really pacy players, id agree with conte in starting caceres. Good to see vidal is back since he’ll be vital in stopping counter attacks
Well he didn’t exactly handle their counter attacking in the first leg, at least barzagli can make up for his lack of pace with his positioning. However in this case i do think caceres is the safer bet simply because barzagli has been out for so long.
God damned Spanish teams. Atletico have an average team compared to the world class teams out there. I hate Spain and therefore will not watch any of this final.
Ah well Real only has a few Spanish players in their starting XI. Should be a good final even if Juve doesn’t play in it.
I support Madrid since they have the most italians
I call Atletico winning the Champions League. Everyone loves the underdogs.