Skip to content

A recipe for disaster: Juventus cannot afford to sit back at the Bernabeu

Reuters

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Giorgio Chiellini waited 19 months to deliver a slice to Cristiano Ronaldo.

Juventus will not soon forget how the Real Madrid forward conned referee Manuel Gräfe into sending their centre-back off during a Champions League group stage game in 2013. Chiellini was guilty of raising his arm a little too high whilst tussling with his opponent on the edge of the box, but only Ronaldo’s false agony, falling to the ground and clutching at his face, transformed a borderline yellow card into a red.

The enduring bad blood between the two players was evident as they bickered through last week’s semi-final first leg. But Chiellini exacted a more violent retribution in the 92nd minute, denying Ronaldo one last attack as he ploughed in late to sweep away both of his opponents’ legs.

Little wonder that the Turin-based newspaper Tuttosport should present this week’s second leg as a showdown between these two protagonists. "Chiellini, shut him up," ran their front page headline, accompanied by a photo of Ronaldo, on Tuesday.

(Courtesy: @massimox_it)

Unfortunately for Juventus, the Ballon d’Or holder is not so easily silenced.

Much like his great rival, Leo Messi, Ronaldo has been so prolific for so long now as to make his achievements seem almost mundane, but the numbers bear repeating. The Portuguese has scored 51 goals in 42 games this season between the Champions League and La Liga.

With Karim Benzema also returning to Madrid’s attack, the suggestion – pushed by a number of commentators over the last seven days – that Juventus should attempt to park the bus feels faintly preposterous when even a 1-0 victory would be enough to see the hosts through.

Madrid have scored at least once in all of their last 23 home games in Europe – dating back to a 2-0 Champions League semi-final defeat to Barcelona in 2011, José Mourinho’s first season in charge. Since then they have averaged 2.91 goals per European game at the Bernabéu.

Juventus are better than most at shutting down an opponent. When manager Massimiliano Allegri saw that his team – who outran Madrid by a combined 7.7 km in Turin – were tiring towards the end of the first leg, introduced an extra centre-back, Andrea Barzagli, and switched to a 3-5-2 formation for the final 25 minutes. Madrid did not enjoy another shot on target thereafter.

It is one thing to pursue a defensive strategy at the end of a game, however, and quite another to do it from the outset. Juventus did not choose to sit back in the last-16 of this tournament, when they took an identical lead into their second leg against Borussia Dortmund. Instead they stuck with an attacking 4-3-1-2 and were rewarded with a Carlos Tevez goal in the third minute.

Allegri did subsequently revert to 3-5-2 after Paul Pogba was injured midway through the first-half, but by that stage – with the Germans’ away goal cancelled out – his team could afford to play more reactively without fear of getting stung. The manager’s willingness to adapt his tactics mid-game has been one of the many impressive aspects of his first season in Turin.

His most brilliant innovation, indeed, might have been to transform Barzagli into an impact sub. Where other teams keep a goalscorer in reserve who can turn a result on its head, Juventus have instead often sought to establish a lead early and then lock it down by introducing the man who might be their most accomplished defender.

Barzagli offers neither the blood and thunder of Chiellini nor the passing range of Leonardo Bonucci, but he reads the game like few others. After missing the first five months of this season due to injury, he has played just 195 minutes of Champions League football this season, but Juventus are yet to concede in the competition when he is on the pitch.

Allegri will hope to use the defender again at the Bernabéu, but is unlikely to do so from the start. If anything, we are more likely to see Paul Pogba on the field at kick-off, after he returned from his own two-month injury lay-off to feature for more than an hour against Cagliari on Sunday. The Frenchman, after all, remains Juve’s second-leading scorer.

While Chiellini and company will do their very best to shut Ronaldo up at the Bernabéu, silencing him completely is improbable.

Juventus’s best hopes of reaching the final lie in their ability to shout louder at the far end of the pitch.

Daily Newsletter

Get the latest trending sports news daily in your inbox