b&w & read all over 
20-04-2024 11:56
20-04-2024 11:56
Juventus escape Sardinia with point vs. Cagliari
On Thursday, Italy mathematically clinched the extra Champions League spot awarded to the leagues with the two best country coefficient.
On Friday, Juventus showed the world that they may well need every bit of the extra leeway that afforded them. In what can only be described as a one of their biggest failures of the season, Juve laid a massive egg against Cagliari at the Sardegna Arena. In one of the few games against mid-table opposition the team had left, a pair of first-half penalties conceded six minutes apart had them down 2-0 at the half, staring yet another loss in the face.
The team responded somewhat in the second half, but still proved to have serious issues trying to get back into the game. Eventually they did, but it took their notoriously risk-averse coach throwing every forward he had available onto the field — and even then, they only scored the goals that got them back into the match on a direct free kick and a late own goal.
Friday was easily one of the worst team displays Juventus have put forward all year — perhaps in multiple years. The 2-2 final score was, in large part, lipstick on the pig after such a dismal display. With a series of games against fellow top-five opposition on the horizon, the idea of Juve’s slipping even out of the top five isn’t the craziest one in the world.
There were rumblings in the press that Massimiliano Allegri was planning on a tactical tweak in this game, employing Carlos Alcaraz as an attacking midfielder in a revamped midfield. When the game began, however, it became abundantly clear that that wasn’t a thing, and the usual 3-5-2 quickly took shape upon the opening sequence. Wojciech Szczesny shook off a broken nose — and eschewed a mask!! — suffered last weekend against Torino to start in goal. Federico Gatti, Bremer, and Danilo protected him in the back line. Timothey Weah received a rare start, with Andrea Cambiaso moving over to the left. Alcaraz did start, but as a more traditional box-to-box role alongside Manuel Locatelli and Adrien Rabiot. Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic started at the top of the spear.
The man in the opposite dugout was a familiar face: Claudio Ranieri. Having brought Cagliari up from Serie B last year, he was fighting to avoid a fate similar to their last time in Serie A. Simone Scuffet started in goal behind the back three of Yerry Mina, Pantelis Hatzidiakos, and Alberto Dossena. Nahitan Nandez and Tommaso Augello were on the wings, bracketing Antoine Makoumbou and Ibrahim Sulemana in midfield. Zito Luvumbo and Eldor Shomurodov backed up Gianluca Gaetano in attack. Cagliari indicated early that they were up for it on the night when Luvumbo barely missed high after cutting in from the right side with the game barely two minutes old. A potentially game-changing moment came only four minutes later, when Alcaraz tried to go up for a nice-looking cross from Gatti, only to receive Mina’s elbow in his forehead. The Argentinian midfielder was busted open and eyes quickly moved to referee Marco Piccinini and VAR, as the contact was very much inside the box. But if the play was reviewed upstairs, it was only for a minute, and Juve were left with the bitter feeling that perhaps they ought to have had a spot-kick.
Shomurodov made his presence felt for a few minutes, blasting a shot just over in the eighth minute and heading the ball straight at Szczesny in the 15th. Juve kept most of the ball, but Cagliari was the team that looked the most dangerous, coming really close again when Luvumbo put in a peach of a cross that Gaetano just missed getting a head to. Juve, meanwhile, finally tested Scuffet in the 20th minute when Weah took a shot from a tight angle and, frankly, hit him in the chest more than anything Scuffet did.
The game changed just before the half-hour.
Szczesny had made an impressive kick save on Luvumbo after a corner, but Dossena’s flick on had come off the arm of Bremer, who had inexplicably left it hanging in the air. This time VAR did take a look, and a penalty was awarded that Gaetano smartly dispatched by sending Szczesny the wrong way.
Things went from bad to worse five minutes later, when Luvumbo was sent clear on goal behind Gatti, and Szczesny made contact with him trying to come out to intervene, resulting in another spot kick. This time the kick taker was Mina, who did exactly what his teammate did: shoot the ball right while sending Szczesny the other direction. Juve thought they were back in the game a few minutes from the end of the half when Chiesa was sent down the left side by Cambiaso and set Vlahovic up for a simple tap-in — but the flag went up immediately, which was confirmed by semi-automated offside, although it was another IFAB call, with a sliver of Chiesa being over the line without him gaining any real advantage on the defender.
Szczesny was called upon to make a sprawling save from a long shot by halftime sub Matteo Prati after the break. Juve continued to move the ball back and forth, trying the occasional cross, but there were no more creative ideas to break down Cagliari’s block.
It wasn’t a surprise, then, that Juve got themselves back into the match off a dead ball. Chiesa had earned a free kick on the left side and set up to take it himself, but after he made a feint toward the ball Vlahovic charged up and bent the ball around the wall and in at the near post, leaving Scuffet beside himself with his teammates,
The goal put wind in Juve’s sails, but they still couldn’t figure out how to get through the Cagliari defense in open play. Most of the time the passes to set a striker up were inaccurate. Vlahovic was reduced to trying an acrobatic overhead kick that flew over the bar with seven minutes left.
Just when it looked like nothing was going to work, the Bianconeri finally pulled even when Kenan Yildiz sent in a cross from the left side. It was aimed at Arkadiusz Milik, who was covered by Dossena. The defender was perhaps surprised that the ball had evaded the attentions of Mina, and he had to lunge to play the ball before it got to Milik. Instead, he tapped it past Scuffet and into his own net with three minutes left. Five minutes of stoppage time were put up on the board, and in the final minute of those five Yildiz nearly won the game at the death when a long throw was flicked on to him, but it didn’t have quite enough power to roll past Scuffet, and when the final whistle was blown the spoils had been shared.
LE PAGELLE
WOJCIECH SZCZESNY - 6. Made a couple of excellent saves that kept the game from being a laugher. I don’t ding him too much for the penalty concession because that run should’ve been contained early on. Impressive he was even out there considering he had surgery on his nose just a few days ago.
FEDERICO GATTI - 5. Had good counting stats with three tackles and a 91.7 percent pass completion, but his positioning was all wrong, and he let Luvumbo get on the wrong side of him in the lead-up to the second penalty.
BREMER - 5.5. Didn’t have to rack up many counting stats with Juve keeping possession, but his mistake — I know, it seemed harsh, but you can’t put your arm up like that — led to the breakthrough off the first penalty.
DANILO - 6. Had far and away the most touches on the night with 125, and 105 passes. He pushed up as much as possible to try and help distribute for the attack.
TIMOTHY WEAH - 5. Never got into the game and couldn’t contribute much on the right-hand side.
CARLOS ALCARAZ - 5. Only completed 82 percent of his passes, none of which were particularly incisive. It was right to haul him off based on performance alone, although it could also be a question of the gash in his forehead that later required stitches.
MANUEL LOCATELLI - 5. It’s been a really rough run of form for him. Only completed three-quarters of his passes, although he did make three tackles on the defensive end.
ADRIEN RABIOT - 4.5. Completely anonymous. Reminiscent of some of his worst games from early in his tenure. The fact that he had two key passes was difficult to believe.
FEDERICO CHIESA - 5.5. Couldn’t get around his man as much, though he also had to deal with constant double-teams. He did co-lead the team in key passes, though.
DUSAN VLAHOVIC - 6. What a free kick that was. Made up for his inability to get free through most of open play. SUBS
KENAN YILDIZ - 6. Very nearly won the game but didn’t quite have enough power on his shot with his late-game chance. The own goal was all him, though, thanks to a fantastic cross.
WESTON McKENNIE- 5. Had a rough match. Didn’t create the way he has all year and generally looked like things were a little too much for him.
ARKADIUSZ MILIK - 5. Only touched the ball nine times in 15 minutes, but didn’t make any serious buzz up to the leader.
SAMUEL ILING-JUNIOR - NR. Should have come on earlier. Didn’t have time to make any kind of impact.
MANAGER ANALYSIS
The few days before this game saw some speculation about what the inclusion of Alcaraz would mean.
The answer turned out to be absolutely nothing. Alcaraz wasn’t deployed as a trequartista behind two strikers, or even alongside Chiesa in a bank of two supporting Vlahovic. This was your run-of-the-mill week. The stagnation we’ve seen from Allegri the last three years is just sad. He can’t move on from the 3-5-2, and he still has shown no signs of being able to cook up a solution to a defense in a low block. That was particularly apparent as Juve sent the ball wide and crossed it repeatedly, hoping that this time someone on their side would win the aerial duel. That’s not a sound strategy, and what’s more most teams have measured for it by now.
Something new is needed, but Allegri is either unwilling or incapable of coming up with that new thing.
LOOKING AHEAD
Juve head to Rome on Tuesday for the second leg of the Coppa Italia final against Lazio. They carry a 2-0 lead into the match and will likely look to defend it at all costs.
After that comes a brutal league gauntlet: a home game against AC Milan, a road match against Bologna, and then an away game to Roma (with last-place Salernitana in between for good measure).
Getting the points we need to stay fifth. Now’s the time to get it done.
On Friday, Juventus showed the world that they may well need every bit of the extra leeway that afforded them. In what can only be described as a one of their biggest failures of the season, Juve laid a massive egg against Cagliari at the Sardegna Arena. In one of the few games against mid-table opposition the team had left, a pair of first-half penalties conceded six minutes apart had them down 2-0 at the half, staring yet another loss in the face.
The team responded somewhat in the second half, but still proved to have serious issues trying to get back into the game. Eventually they did, but it took their notoriously risk-averse coach throwing every forward he had available onto the field — and even then, they only scored the goals that got them back into the match on a direct free kick and a late own goal.
Friday was easily one of the worst team displays Juventus have put forward all year — perhaps in multiple years. The 2-2 final score was, in large part, lipstick on the pig after such a dismal display. With a series of games against fellow top-five opposition on the horizon, the idea of Juve’s slipping even out of the top five isn’t the craziest one in the world.
There were rumblings in the press that Massimiliano Allegri was planning on a tactical tweak in this game, employing Carlos Alcaraz as an attacking midfielder in a revamped midfield. When the game began, however, it became abundantly clear that that wasn’t a thing, and the usual 3-5-2 quickly took shape upon the opening sequence. Wojciech Szczesny shook off a broken nose — and eschewed a mask!! — suffered last weekend against Torino to start in goal. Federico Gatti, Bremer, and Danilo protected him in the back line. Timothey Weah received a rare start, with Andrea Cambiaso moving over to the left. Alcaraz did start, but as a more traditional box-to-box role alongside Manuel Locatelli and Adrien Rabiot. Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic started at the top of the spear.
The man in the opposite dugout was a familiar face: Claudio Ranieri. Having brought Cagliari up from Serie B last year, he was fighting to avoid a fate similar to their last time in Serie A. Simone Scuffet started in goal behind the back three of Yerry Mina, Pantelis Hatzidiakos, and Alberto Dossena. Nahitan Nandez and Tommaso Augello were on the wings, bracketing Antoine Makoumbou and Ibrahim Sulemana in midfield. Zito Luvumbo and Eldor Shomurodov backed up Gianluca Gaetano in attack. Cagliari indicated early that they were up for it on the night when Luvumbo barely missed high after cutting in from the right side with the game barely two minutes old. A potentially game-changing moment came only four minutes later, when Alcaraz tried to go up for a nice-looking cross from Gatti, only to receive Mina’s elbow in his forehead. The Argentinian midfielder was busted open and eyes quickly moved to referee Marco Piccinini and VAR, as the contact was very much inside the box. But if the play was reviewed upstairs, it was only for a minute, and Juve were left with the bitter feeling that perhaps they ought to have had a spot-kick.
Shomurodov made his presence felt for a few minutes, blasting a shot just over in the eighth minute and heading the ball straight at Szczesny in the 15th. Juve kept most of the ball, but Cagliari was the team that looked the most dangerous, coming really close again when Luvumbo put in a peach of a cross that Gaetano just missed getting a head to. Juve, meanwhile, finally tested Scuffet in the 20th minute when Weah took a shot from a tight angle and, frankly, hit him in the chest more than anything Scuffet did.
The game changed just before the half-hour.
Szczesny had made an impressive kick save on Luvumbo after a corner, but Dossena’s flick on had come off the arm of Bremer, who had inexplicably left it hanging in the air. This time VAR did take a look, and a penalty was awarded that Gaetano smartly dispatched by sending Szczesny the wrong way.
Things went from bad to worse five minutes later, when Luvumbo was sent clear on goal behind Gatti, and Szczesny made contact with him trying to come out to intervene, resulting in another spot kick. This time the kick taker was Mina, who did exactly what his teammate did: shoot the ball right while sending Szczesny the other direction. Juve thought they were back in the game a few minutes from the end of the half when Chiesa was sent down the left side by Cambiaso and set Vlahovic up for a simple tap-in — but the flag went up immediately, which was confirmed by semi-automated offside, although it was another IFAB call, with a sliver of Chiesa being over the line without him gaining any real advantage on the defender.
Szczesny was called upon to make a sprawling save from a long shot by halftime sub Matteo Prati after the break. Juve continued to move the ball back and forth, trying the occasional cross, but there were no more creative ideas to break down Cagliari’s block.
It wasn’t a surprise, then, that Juve got themselves back into the match off a dead ball. Chiesa had earned a free kick on the left side and set up to take it himself, but after he made a feint toward the ball Vlahovic charged up and bent the ball around the wall and in at the near post, leaving Scuffet beside himself with his teammates,
The goal put wind in Juve’s sails, but they still couldn’t figure out how to get through the Cagliari defense in open play. Most of the time the passes to set a striker up were inaccurate. Vlahovic was reduced to trying an acrobatic overhead kick that flew over the bar with seven minutes left.
Just when it looked like nothing was going to work, the Bianconeri finally pulled even when Kenan Yildiz sent in a cross from the left side. It was aimed at Arkadiusz Milik, who was covered by Dossena. The defender was perhaps surprised that the ball had evaded the attentions of Mina, and he had to lunge to play the ball before it got to Milik. Instead, he tapped it past Scuffet and into his own net with three minutes left. Five minutes of stoppage time were put up on the board, and in the final minute of those five Yildiz nearly won the game at the death when a long throw was flicked on to him, but it didn’t have quite enough power to roll past Scuffet, and when the final whistle was blown the spoils had been shared.
LE PAGELLE
WOJCIECH SZCZESNY - 6. Made a couple of excellent saves that kept the game from being a laugher. I don’t ding him too much for the penalty concession because that run should’ve been contained early on. Impressive he was even out there considering he had surgery on his nose just a few days ago.
FEDERICO GATTI - 5. Had good counting stats with three tackles and a 91.7 percent pass completion, but his positioning was all wrong, and he let Luvumbo get on the wrong side of him in the lead-up to the second penalty.
BREMER - 5.5. Didn’t have to rack up many counting stats with Juve keeping possession, but his mistake — I know, it seemed harsh, but you can’t put your arm up like that — led to the breakthrough off the first penalty.
DANILO - 6. Had far and away the most touches on the night with 125, and 105 passes. He pushed up as much as possible to try and help distribute for the attack.
TIMOTHY WEAH - 5. Never got into the game and couldn’t contribute much on the right-hand side.
CARLOS ALCARAZ - 5. Only completed 82 percent of his passes, none of which were particularly incisive. It was right to haul him off based on performance alone, although it could also be a question of the gash in his forehead that later required stitches.
MANUEL LOCATELLI - 5. It’s been a really rough run of form for him. Only completed three-quarters of his passes, although he did make three tackles on the defensive end.
ADRIEN RABIOT - 4.5. Completely anonymous. Reminiscent of some of his worst games from early in his tenure. The fact that he had two key passes was difficult to believe.
FEDERICO CHIESA - 5.5. Couldn’t get around his man as much, though he also had to deal with constant double-teams. He did co-lead the team in key passes, though.
DUSAN VLAHOVIC - 6. What a free kick that was. Made up for his inability to get free through most of open play. SUBS
KENAN YILDIZ - 6. Very nearly won the game but didn’t quite have enough power on his shot with his late-game chance. The own goal was all him, though, thanks to a fantastic cross.
WESTON McKENNIE- 5. Had a rough match. Didn’t create the way he has all year and generally looked like things were a little too much for him.
ARKADIUSZ MILIK - 5. Only touched the ball nine times in 15 minutes, but didn’t make any serious buzz up to the leader.
SAMUEL ILING-JUNIOR - NR. Should have come on earlier. Didn’t have time to make any kind of impact.
MANAGER ANALYSIS
The few days before this game saw some speculation about what the inclusion of Alcaraz would mean.
The answer turned out to be absolutely nothing. Alcaraz wasn’t deployed as a trequartista behind two strikers, or even alongside Chiesa in a bank of two supporting Vlahovic. This was your run-of-the-mill week. The stagnation we’ve seen from Allegri the last three years is just sad. He can’t move on from the 3-5-2, and he still has shown no signs of being able to cook up a solution to a defense in a low block. That was particularly apparent as Juve sent the ball wide and crossed it repeatedly, hoping that this time someone on their side would win the aerial duel. That’s not a sound strategy, and what’s more most teams have measured for it by now.
Something new is needed, but Allegri is either unwilling or incapable of coming up with that new thing.
LOOKING AHEAD
Juve head to Rome on Tuesday for the second leg of the Coppa Italia final against Lazio. They carry a 2-0 lead into the match and will likely look to defend it at all costs.
After that comes a brutal league gauntlet: a home game against AC Milan, a road match against Bologna, and then an away game to Roma (with last-place Salernitana in between for good measure).
Getting the points we need to stay fifth. Now’s the time to get it done.