Juventus were unable to overcome Atalanta in this weekend’s Serie A clash in Bergamo, with the two sides eventually settling for a 1-1 draw.
The Old Lady nearly scored an early goal for the third consecutive outing when Dusan Vlahovic forced the early save from Sportiello, and we continued to put the pressure on in the early stages to no avail.
The last half hour of the first-half became somewhat of a tactical battle, with neither defence granting much opportunity to challenge the goalkeeper. Things did take a while to really get going in the new half also, but when Ruslan Malinovskyi launched his strike beyond Wojciech Szczesny we had no chance but to throw everything at it, and just as our efforts looked to be succumbing to failure we found an injury-time leveller.
A loss would definitely having been painful given that I felt we were the better side throughout, but what a strike by the Atalanta midfielder to put them ahead. You simply have to applaud the effort and move on, and we now have a very favourable set of league fixtures ahead, with our Champions League campaign continuing next week also.
Patrick
