Yes, Juventus had an outside chance to get into the top eight as the final day of the Champions League league phase dawned on Wednesday night. But it was a very outside chance. Juve needed to win, and they needed any six out of a possible nine results to go their way in the chaos of the 17 other games on the docket.
Since they had no control of their own destiny, it made sense that the Bianconeri didn’t go balls to the wall to beat Monaco at the Stade Louis II. They rotated the squad, and they never
showed a whole lot of urgency. For that matter, neither did Monaco, who came into the day barely in the top 24 and needing a win, or a draw and some help, to stay in the competition. Given their situation, they were surprisingly languid, although that might’ve also been a product of a massive injury list that included Paul Pogba, because of course it did.
Ultimately, neither team did anything to secure a victory, but neither did they meet with catastrophe after playing out a goalless draw. Juve actually moved up two places to 13th, moving into a slightly better pod for Friday’s draw. Monaco got the results they needed to finish 23rd, slinking into the competition just ahead of Ligue 1 rivals Marseille, who were eliminated when Benfica’s goalkeeper scored a diving header on the last kick of the game against a nine-man Real Madrid. (Seriously, if you haven’t seen it check it out. It’s madness.)
As for Juve, the labyrinthine set of circumstances for them to jump into the top eight did in fact exist at halftime, and Luciano Spalletti made moves in the second half that looked like he would put effort into chasing the game. But the attitude didn’t change too much — which was just as well, as by the midway point in the second half it was clear that the dice weren’t going to come up Juve’s way for the top eight.
At the end of the day, Juve went through the game with minimal expenditure of energy, no one pushing the yellow card threshold got booked, and no one got injured. Given the situation, that’s probably as good result as you could hope for.
Spalletti was still missing birthday boy Dusan Vlahovic and Daniele Rugani, and his 3-4-2-1 setup saw a decent amount of rotation — as he promised — from the team that beat Napoli over the weekend. Mattia Perin started in goal behind the back three of Pierre Kalulu, Bremer, and Lloyd Kelly. Weston McKennie and Juan Cabal started on the outside as wing-backs, while Teun Koopmeiners partnered Khéphren Thuram in midfield. Francisco Conceição and Fabio Miretti supported Loïs Openda in the attack.
Monaco manager Sébastian Pocognoli was dealing with almost as long an injury list as Antonio Conte had been on Sunday. Stalwart goalkeeper Lukás Hrádecký was on the shelf, as were Eric Dier, Wout Faes, Christian Mawissa, Mohammed Salisu, and Takumi Minamoto. Oh, and Pogba. That led to Pocognoli being forced to use a bunch of midfielders out of position in defense. What was listed as a 4-2-3-1 on the match broadcast was really a 3-4-2-1 in practice. Phillip Köhn was the goalkeeper, defended by Thilo Kerher, Jordan Teze, and old friend Denis Zakaria. A pair of Brazilians, Vanderson and Kaio Henrique, served as the wing-backs, flanking midfielders Mamadou Coulibaly and Lamine Camara. Maghnes Akliouche and Aleksandr Golovin — who, if you remember, was once a serious Juve transfer target in the summer of 2018 — supported USMNT regular Folarin Balogun up front.
It took exactly 52 seconds for Perin to give Juventini worldwide a collective heart attack. He must have been trying to pass the ball to Kelly, but completely bottled it and passed the ball right to Akliouche at the edge of the 18. The young Frenchman tried to hit the ball first-time, but fortunately for Perin bottled his kick and shanked it so badly that it went out of bounds closer to the corner flag than the goalpost.
That turned out to be one perhaps two of the best chances either team had at scoring a goal.
Monaco seemed to gain some confidence from that early Juventus brain fart, because they pushed hard for the next 10 to 15 minutes as Juve seemed to be trying to figure out where they were. Balogun had tried to meet some long passes through the middle but had been marked well by Kalulu, and in the 14th minute he tried again, riding a sliding challenge from Bremer before beating Perin across his goal, but as the crowd roared and Balogun celebrated, referee Jose Maria Sanchez’s whistle rose above the din. Balogun had only managed it because he’d shoved Kalulu, who had position on him on the initial ball, in the back, and the Spanish official immediately chalked the goal off. It seems that everyone other than Monaco saw the push, as Pocognoli was shown demanding explanations on the sideline and was ultimately booked for continuing the argument.
Just after the half-hour, Monaco actually created a big chance. Vanderson came out of nowhere to overlap Akliouche, who left him a neat pass into the right channel that the Brazilian slammed at the near post, only to be denied by Perin fingertipping the ball over the bar. But that was one of the few times Monaco pulled something unpredictable in possession. That forced them into a couple of long shots, including one by Vanderson, who forced Perin into another save in the 37th minute.
It wasn’t until the last five minutes of the half that Juve really started to show some life in the final third. Openda got himself into a decent position in the left channel but flashed a shot past the far post, then a few minutes later McKennie was the recipient of an excellent pass into the box by Miretti, but seemed to get the ball stuck in his feet and had to cycle it around the box, where it was eventually teed up for Openda to take a hit, only to see it blocked by Kehrer.
If the Juve staff wasn’t getting updates on the state of the other games in the competition on the sidelines they certainly did in the locker room, and Spalletti came out swinging by introducing Kenan Yildiz for a struggling Conceição, along with Vasilije Adzic in place of Miretti. Four minutes into the half, the young Montenegrin lofted a ball for his Turkish teammate after a short free kick routine, but gave it just too much air and floated it past him.
Neither squad did much in the way of anything as the second half went on by. A victory would seal Monaco’s place in the next round without any doubt, but as the results trickled in and it became clear that the only thing that would eliminate Monaco was a loss, they too eased off the gas so as not to concede late. If there was an aggressor at this point, it was Juve, but at that point they surely knew the top eight was out of reach, and the only attacking product they conjured was a long shot by Edon Zhegrova deep into stoppages that went miles wide. Sanchez soon brought the curtain down on the affair, and Juve began getting set for the weekend game at Parma, as well as the playoff draw on Friday.
