Italian club Juventus started their Serie A campaign in style after they defeated visitors Sassuolo at the Allianz Stadium. Their new signing Angel de Maria shined with a brilliant opening goal and then assisted Dusan Vlahovic in the second half. After the offseason roller-coaster and many injuries, it wasn’t clear how would Juventus might play.
After a good start to the match, the Juventus side faced heat from the Sassuolo side. Their goalkeeper Perin made many eye-catching saves. Allegri played a 4-4-2 structure initially which didn’t help them much. However, during the cooling break in the first half, he changed the structure to 4-3-3 with Cuadrado coming to the wing.
The change in the structure paid off as they quickly found themselves a brilliant goal from Angel de Maria. Sandro sent a perfect cross to Maria whose volley was too good to be saved. Thus the Juventus side was suddenly ahead in the match despite the run of play.
Better shot conversion rate from Allegri’s side
Allegri’s side was playing nicely throughout but was not converting them to shots. It was evident at the end as Sassuolo had 19 shots and 7 on target. Juventus was far behind with 14 shots and 4 on target. But they could convert those shots which won them the match.
After not being able to kill off the matches last season, the side was determined to do something different. At the 41st minute mark, Vlahovic was fouled by Ferrari as the former took the ball down from Sandro inside the box. Dusan then fired straight from the spot and put the ball into the net as Consigli dived to his right.
Thus at the halfway mark, they had already scored 2 with Sassuolo’s good work in the initial phases had gone to waste.
A Brillant second half from Juventus as they killed the match
It wasn’t a bad first half from Sassuolo. They took 8 shots but only one of them came from inside the box. Bremer was putting in nice work at the back of the defense. Refreshed Juventus after halftime did what many people did not see coming. They finally killed a match.
With only 5 minutes into the second half, Angel de Maria played a good ball to Vlahovic. Maria initially received the ball from Ayhan who made a wrong pass. After seeing that Ayhan was running to cut off Maria, Dusan made a run in the box. Maria’s pass towards Dusan came off Ahyan hand’s so would have been a penalty anyway. But the Serbian did not miss and smashed another goal.
The rest of the match saw neat defending from Juventus to keep a clean sheet. And they were well rewarded. Sassuolo on the other hand had its moments but was not able to capitalize. Juventus sit 2nd on the points table whereas Sassuolo dived to the bottom after a heavy defeat.
Juventus will play Sampdoria next week whereas Sassuolo will face Lecce.
