PreviousLive Chronicle
Villarreal depleted without Gerard Moreno or Trigueros barely got a draw against a Juventus that threatens ruin, without a model and with a saddened squad that only seems to hold up thanks to Dusan Vlahovic.
The Serbian was the author of the 0-1, a masterpiece that will condition the tie until the decisive round in Turin.
VLLVillarreal
1
Rulli, Albiol, Juan Foyth, Alfonso Pedraza (Estupiñán, min. 78), Pau Torres, Chukwueze (Yeremy Pino, min. 89), Capoue, Alberto Moreno (Trigueros, min. 78), Parejo, Giovani Lo Celso and Arnaut Danjuma (Boulaye Dia, min. 89)
YOUTH Juventus
1
Szczesny, Danilo, Matthijs de Ligt, Alex Sandro (Bonucci, min. 45), Rabiot, Mattia De Sciglio (Luca Pellegrini, min. 86), Manuel Locatelli (Arthur Melo, min. 70), Cuadrado, Weston McKennie (Zakaria, min 80), Dusan Vlahovic and Morata
Goals
0-1 min.
0: Dusan Vlahović.
1-1 min.
65: Even.
Referee
Daniel Siebert
Yellow cards Rulli (min. 72) and Rabiot (min. 72)
Vlahovic spent a couple of minutes warming up repeating the same gesture: oriented control and spin.
In half a square meter, half-man, half-precision instrument—tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—his left hand scooped up the bullets and loaded them back into the magazine in a fraction of a second as his body swung around like ballet dancers do, each time in a different sense, never giving clues.
The match began and half a minute had not elapsed when Danilo recovered a ball in the Juventus field and threw it in the direction of the Serb, who distanced himself towards the area pursued a meter by Albiol.
As the ball flew towards him, instead of looking at it, he glanced at the centre-backs and made up his mind.
He slept the ball with his left foot and, turning on himself, he finished off with his right through the minimum gap offered by the Villarreal captain and his squire Pau Torres, lined up to correct the incorrigible.
When the ball hit the net without Rulli noticing how it had happened, the huddled crowd at La Cerámica fell silent in stupor.
The fans had just attended one of those magical moments that this game offers from time to time.
The intellectual creation of a gifted man who thinks football at an unusual speed.
Too fast for the public and too fast for his opponents.
The tie began in the second 31 with 0-1 against Villarreal.
When the ball hit the net without Rulli noticing how it had happened, the huddled crowd at La Cerámica fell silent in stupor.
The fans had just attended one of those magical moments that this game offers from time to time.
The intellectual creation of a gifted man who thinks football at an unusual speed.
Too fast for the public and too fast for his opponents.
The tie began in the second 31 with 0-1 against Villarreal.
When the ball hit the net without Rulli noticing how it had happened, the huddled crowd at La Cerámica fell silent in stupor.
The fans had just attended one of those magical moments that this game offers from time to time.
The intellectual creation of a gifted man who thinks football at an unusual speed.
Too fast for the public and too fast for his opponents.
The tie began in the second 31 with 0-1 against Villarreal.
Too fast for the public and too fast for his opponents.
The tie began in the second 31 with 0-1 against Villarreal.
Too fast for the public and too fast for his opponents.
The tie began in the second 31 with 0-1 against Villarreal.
Suddenly forced to take the initiative, Villarreal settled in the opposite field to put pressure on Juventus and strip them of the ball.
Then the great impasse was revealed.
Once the advantage was achieved, Juventus neither wanted nor could leave their field, embedded as they were in their line of three central defenders without Bonucci, their helmsman, who started the game on the bench due to muscular overload.
Instead of delving into stiffness, Villarreal controlled the ball but didn't move it fast enough.
In the absence of Gerard Moreno to improvise dizzying advances, and with Trigueros warming up in the band, Emery's team stopped.
The successions of passes became thick and slow, almost always at the foot, at the expense of Danjuma's lightning unchecking finding an interpreter.
It was not so.
The field of 30-meter trenches that opened between Parejo's turret and goalkeeper Szczesny cushioned Villarreal's heavy advances.
After ten minutes, Pedraza's pressure on the hesitant Danilo opened a gap that the Cordovan lane exploited to the fullest.
The pass from him to Lo Celso ended in a shot at the post.
But that, which seemed the beginning of a succession of arrivals, was just the maximum point of approach in the first part.
Bonucci's entry at half-time freed De Ligt to anticipate and gave Juventus some order.
The party that had settled in the Italian countryside like a transhumant village that settles in a valley, began to move to other latitudes closer to Vlahovic.
Strange loneliness for Parejo at 1-1
Juventus are an ashen team until Vlahovic appears on the play, and that happened in a dropper – he had half a chance in the second half and forced Rulli to jump like a cat to avoid the second.
Juve paid for the flattening by conceding an improper goal from their history as a speculator team.
It happened in another of those slow maneuvers by Villarreal against the rival area.
Capoue picked up a ball in the left quadrant of the attack and sent it over Parejo, his partner in the double pivot, without Rabiot or De Ligt being able to set the mark on anyone.
"It was a shame," said Massimiliano Allegri, the coach in charge, after the evening.
The lack of references, perhaps, confused the French and the Dutch, two very current talents who are victims of the depressive ecosystem that surrounds them in Turin.
Juventus is a giant rolling downhill.
His salvation today seems to be in the hands of Dusan Vlahovic, a brilliant young man of just 22 years old who struck the first blow of the tie in the old Madrigal.
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