Those who are still inclined to deride Italian football as too defensive probably look to Juventus and AC Milan as their top piece of evidence.
Sunday’s game between the two Italian giants was the fourth goalless draw in their past five league matches. In a match between two old warhorses of the Italian coaching ranks, Massimiliano Allegri and Luciano Spalletti cancelled each other out tactically. Both teams played hard. Juve took command of the latter parts of the second half but weren’t able to beat
Allegri’s entrenched back line, despite hitting the target with five of their 10 overall shots. Milan perhaps came the closest to scoring, when Alexis Saelemaekers slammed a shot off the crossbar early in the second period.
But the two sides simply couldn’t break each other down, and the San Siro saw yet another scoreless affair between the two rivals.
How did Juve’s players fare on the storied Milan grass? Let’s take a closer look.
MICHELE DI GREGORIO – 6.5. Only had to make one save on the night, but it was quite a good one, parrying away a thunderous shot by Youssouf Fofana. Otherwise kept his box secure and aligned the defense well. It’s good seeing his confidence back.
PIERRE KALULU – 6. He was light on counting stats today, but still kept his old club quiet on his side. It’s almost like the man wants to prove to them just how dumb it was for them to practically give him away.
BREMER – 7. Completed every pass he attempted and was second on the team in clearances (3). He’s finally started to look like the real Bremer over the last few games. Milan’s unconventional front two had no chance when they tried to get by him.
LLOYD KELLY – 6.5. Stout defensively and added a key pass when he went forward. I know we keep belaboring this point, but if you’d told me this time last year that Lloyd Kelly would be in this kind of form, I’d have offered to sell you a bridge.
WESTON McKENNIE – 6.5. Typical performance, popping up everywhere and ending the day on the left flank. Racked up two tackles and a key pass.
MANUEL LOCATELLI – 7. His passing has stepped up a level in the last few weeks. Made some really good long ones, completing five of eight long balls and making a pair of key passes. He also led the team with five clearances. Like Kalulu, he put up a hell of a match against the team that gave up on him. Oh, and he broke Luka Modric’s face.
KHÉPHREN THURAM – 6. Thought he’d opened the scoring in the first half before it was discovered he was rather comically offside. How the assistant missed that I don’t know. Outside of that Thuram had a strong match. He completed 97.7 percent of his passes and was the only starter other than Francisco Conceição to record more than one dribble. Threw in a key pass as well.
ANDREA CAMBIASO – 5. The fact that he led the team in tackles belies the fact that his defense was once again pretty crap. He picked up a needless booking 20 minutes into the game and was very lucky that Saelemaekers hit the woodwork. Didn’t produce enough on the offensive end to make up for it.
FRANCISCO CONCEIÇÃO – 6.5. Made some great moves, including the cross on Thuram’s would-be goal. He had more than twice as many dribbles as anyone else on the field, posted a key pass, and hit the target with three out of four shots, although none of them was truly able to test Mike Maignan in goal.
JÉRÉMIE BOGA – 5.5. Highly accurate with his passing but didn’t cause the chaos in the box that he usually does. Everyone’s bound to have an off game.
JONATHAN DAVID – 5. Not what was required up front, David had only one shot—a header that flashed wide—and didn’t exactly set the world on fire with his passing either.
SUBS
EMIL HOLM – 6. Registered a pair of dribbles and a key pass, and was far more threatening and more defensively solid than the man he replaced (Cambiaso)
TEUN KOOPMEINERS – 5.5. Forced a save out of Maignan minutes after coming on but didn’t do much else.
KENAN YILDIZ – NR. Looked a little off. Clearly he still isn’t 100 percent.
EDON ZHEGROVA – NR. Unable to do much as the change of pase for Conceição at the end.
DUSAN VLAHOVIC – NR. Was on the field for two minutes plus stoppages and looked more like a threat than David did in 88. Miscalculated the offside trap a couple of times.
MANAGER ANALYSIS
I’m not gonna lie, I would have felt really good if we’d managed to beat Max Allegri once this year.
That probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most of the avid readers of this site, but it remains the truth. The reason it wasn’t to be is the same reasons I’ve been criticizing him for years: the Max of today coaches does not coach to win, but rather not to lose.
It was up to Luciano Spalletti to push through that, and had this been a 120-minute game as opposed to 90, Juve might have been able to get there. Boga not having the best game wasn’t idea, as he’s been the team’s main creative outlet when Kenan Yildiz has been absent. Locatelli was also helpful in that department today, but the forwards—David in particular—couldn’t do what was needed with the service that did come their way.
Working in Spalletti’s favor was another of Allegri’s flaws: the insistence on playing people, particularly forwards, out of position. Putting Rafael Leão and Christian Pulisic in a front two puts neither of them in a position to succeed, and it was relatively easy for Kalulu, Bremer, and Kelly to neutralize them. The two combined for one shot (off target) and two key passes. That left it up to the likes of Saelemaekers and Adrien Rabiot to be the ones to produce offense, and the rest of the team was able to limit their threat.
Spalletti knew that Juve had a margin of error in the race for the top four and didn’t exactly go for the downs tactically in this game—something that annoys me no matter who’s coaching—but ultimately got the better performance out of his team, and had them playing well enough that the worst-case scenario of a loss didn’t come to pass.
LOOKING AHEAD
It’s crunch time. Juventus control their destiny for the Champions League with four games left. Those four games: Verona (home), Lecce (away), Fiorentina (home) and Torino (away). All games with their pitfalls—Lecce are fighting to stay away from relegation, Fiorentina always want to take a bite out of Juve, and the Derby della Mole is the Derby della Mole—but all games that Juventus will be reasonably favored to win. Run the table, and achieve your goal.
Time to do it, boys.
