Hardly Juve.
– According to several travel sites, Lisbon is the best destination in Europe this time of year. 25 degrees, clear skies, ocean breezes, good food and great wine. Juventus arrives in Portugal with a suitcase full of a favorable sentence that has just returned them 15 points in the league and sets the table for a beautiful evening by unlocking the match with the usual scrum goal from Adrien Rabiot. But Juventus apparently is not programmed for aesthetics, but for suffering. And from these premises he still manages to treat himself to 85 agony minutes before conquering the semifinal;
– Massimiliano Allegri changes tactical score compared to the first leg, abandoning the project of playing against Sporting Lisbon with the idea of having more control over the ball from behind (and consequently over the moments of the match). It is a match plan that works until Juventus suddenly realizes they are afraid, both of a final success and of another painful and inevitable elimination. The 20 minutes after Danilo’s defensive hole are pure chaos. A continuous bet on the outcome of a coin that flies in the air and that luckily tonight showed the head of an Old Lady and not the cross of the umpteenth elimination in the quarterfinals;
– The clearest picture of Juventus’ suffering was taken within the 20 minutes on the green lawn of Paul Pogba, unable to play more than three balls and relegated to purely defensive tasks, carried out with fluctuating results. In an evening in which there is also a little from Chiesa and Di Maria, the most out of tune note is played again by Dusan Vlahovic. Today on our Instagram profile (which is getting hotter and cooler) a post dedicated to the Serbian forward and to a very black moment came out. Go and read it that I would just copy and paste;
– Can Allegri smile for something other than qualifying? Probably yes, thanks to the performance of his 3 midfielders. Rabiot it’s a tax that every team has to deal with. Miretti still appears light, but plays with more and more personality. Locatelli is the man of the match with Cuadrado if we exclude the new football crush of the undersigned. Manuel Ugarte, 22 years old, is a sensational midfielder that every European team should absolutely buy. In Sporting in brackets they disappoint all the others, led by a invisible Pedro Gonçalves;
– And so, between sweat and tears, Juventus pushes themselves to the semifinals, where they will find the team that is one with the Europa League: Sevilla. With the elimination of Manchester United, the black and whites are undoubtedly the best equipped squad among those left in the race to lift the cup in Budapest, but tonight in some ways this awareness seemed like a limitation. Certainly the final exultation tells us that the group is solid and has the goal in mind. Sure, finding a left-back worthy of being called one would help. Alex Sandro is now like the referees for us: we no longer comment.