The Bianconeri looked at times like they couldn’t get out of their own way, but scored twice late to take it.
After consecutive victories over Bologna and Roma in direct clashes at the top end of the Serie A table, Juventus went into Saturday’s game against Pisa looking at a five-game stretch against provincial sides. It was a major opportunity to rack up points and put pressure on the teams above them in the race for the top four.
It was also a potential minefield. Of the many, many frustrating things about Juventus over this last five or so seasons, the most maddening of all has been the way Juventus has played down to inferior competition. As much as the five games were a chance to rack up fifteen points, the pessimist could easily see the Bianconeri screwing this crap up and letting a relegation-threatened team like Pisa steal a point or three off them at any given point.
The pessimist was certainly having heart palpitations about 60 minutes into the match at the Arena Garibaldi Saturday night. Not only were Juve having a hard time breaking down their hosts, but Pisa had hit the woodwork twice and were very much looking like the better side since the second half began. It was exactly the scenario that people were praying would be avoided against the 19th-placed team in the league, regardless of how difficult Pisa had been to play against this season.
Fortunately, the team kept on pushing—dare I say leaning—on Pisa’s defense, and, with the help of some effective substitutions on the hour mark, they forced a ball over the line with 15 minutes left before salting the match away in stoppage time. The 2-0 victory was an ugly one, but the ugly points count the same, and these three vaulted Juve into third place pending the results of Sunday’s contests.
Luciano Spalletti made a few changes from the game against Roma last week. The biggest change came due to the injury to Francisco Conceição, who was forced to the bench along with Federico Gatti, Daniele Rugani, Juan Cabal, and Dusan Vlahovic. Michele Di Gregorio started behind the usual 3-4-2-1 formation, with Pierre Kalulu, Bremer, and Lloyd Kelly screening him in defense. Andrea Cambiaso and Weston McKennie changed sides on the wings, with the Italian playing mainly on the right and the American mainly on the left. Manuel Locatelli and Khéphren Thuram manned the midfield, while Teun Koopmeiners was moved back into the attacking midfield spots on his return to suspension, partnering with Kenan Yildiz to support Loïs Openda.
Pisa manager Alberto Gilardino was missing two important players, Ebeneezer Akinsanmiro and leading scorer M’Bala Nzola, to the Africa Cup of Nations, while Calvin Stengs was injured, as was old friend Juan Cuadrado. He sent out a 3-5-2, with Croatian keeper Adrian Šemper at its base. Simone Canestrelli, Antonio Caracciolo, and Arturo Calabresi made up the back three. Idrissa Touré and Samuele Angori played at wing-back, flanking Mehdi Léris, Michel Aebischer, and Isak Vural in midfield. Mattéo Tramoni and Stefano Moreo made up the strike pair.
Juve nearly got things started with one hell of a bang, getting the ball into the box within seconds of kickoff and forcing Šemper to punch it away from Thuram. McKennie had a shot kick-saved behind and Yildiz snatched at one and fired off-target, but despite having nearly 60 percent of possession through the first 40 minutes they only managed six shots, two of them on target. Thuram and Koopmeiners each had shots blocked at the last second, but for the most part the Bianconeri struggled to break the Pisa defense down.
As the game moved toward the half, Pisa started to break off a few decent counterattacks, and in the final minute Pisa won their first corner of the match and very nearly scored, taking it short and crossing it in to Moreo, who flicked the ball off the crossbar. Moreo had another chance on the break in the minute of first-half stoppage time, but a backtracking Locatelli slid in to block.
Pisa took that momentum and ran with it as the second half began. Angori had a free kick just flicked behind by Kalulu in the wall, and on the hour mark Tramoni was gifted a free header after Kalulu and Bremer both followed the run of Moreo, but he thunked it off the base of the post.
Spalletti had seen enough, and introduced Jonathan David and Edon Zhegrova from the bench. The Kosovo international immediately pumped up the Juventus attack. Within two minutes Yildiz had a shot in the right channel cleared by a last-ditch block by Canestrelli, then Kelly got forward and surprised Šemper at his near post, but clanged his own shot off the woodwork.
Juve had turned back Pisa’s best swing, but were still having trouble breaking the home team down. It took a little bit of luck at the end of a neat passing sequence down the right side that ended in McKennie putting in a low ball into the six-yard box. Calabrese slid in to clear it but deflected it off of Kalulu instead and bounced into the net to push Juve into the lead.
Zhegrova forced a pair of saves out of Šemper as the game continued, the second far more impressive than the first, while Gilardino threw on as many offensive subs as he could, Louis Thomas Buffon, the 18-year-old son of the one and only Gianluigi. But the Juve defense clamped down, allowing only two shots after the breakthrough, neither of them particularly close to the target. Then they made sure of things in the opening minutes of stoppage time when David pushed Fabio Miretti into the box on the counterattack. The young substitute—he’s still only 22, y’all—showed the development of his year on loan, breaking out an outrageous bit of skill to keep the ball from a sliding Carocciolo before squaring it to the left. The ball deflected off David but right into the run of Yildiz, who easily tapped the ball into an empty net to finish the game off.
The remaining added minutes went by with little fanfare, save for the love tap Buffon received from Bremer right at the end of the match as the teenager failed to keep the ball from going behind for a final goal kick. The final whistle brought victory and put the pressure on the rest of the league’s top teams to get results on Sunday.
Category: General Sports
