Excellent result and just what they needed to kick off the campaign. Juve’s first clean sheet since March.
Shaky start but once we got the first goal grew in confidence. We dictated the tempo of the game and looked comfortable in the second half. Game management was spot on and let’s hope we can progress from this result and performance.
Good first half. The team didn’t need do much in the second half so they just played the second half safe. Good to see a clean sheet. Makes a world of difference having Dybala, Cuadrado, and of course Bentancour in there. Midfield needs to be better but they got the job done.
It is interesting to watch what Messi and CR 3.5 have left in their wakes when they have left clubs. Barca is a shell of itself and in deep debt primarily due to kowtowing to Messi for all of those years. Same with Real, but they are 3-4 years further down the track than Barca since CR left them a few years ago. Plus they have a much more sensible overall salary structure than most top clubs not named Bayern Munich. Now Juve is in a bit of a similar boat to Real. Before CR 3.5 arrived, we played pretty well as a team. if we had saved the $$$ we spent on him and bought a top class Keeper, a couple legit MFs, some young FBs and 1 more CB, we would be in a much stronger position than we are now. Yes we still could use a true #9 as well, but we could get a decent player near Higgy's level for a lot less and continue to play team futbol instead of standing round and feeding Ronaldo. Luckily for us, he was a drain for only 3 seasons. Unluckily for us, one of them was the COVID season so we took a much bigger financial hit that we otherwise would have. Was the Ronaldo experiment worth it? Depends one what we were trying to accomplish. On the field, I would say no. We would be further down the rebuild road if we had kept Bepe and let him rebuild the team with the money we spent on Ronaldo. But off the field, he was a definite success. Both for the Juve "brand" and also for Serie A. The league had been (and still is) losing top level players for a while. It was important for the league that Juve was able to bring in a world star and there is no doubt it helped the league's negotiations for TV deals. If he had left back in June, I wouldn't have much of a problem with him moving on. But waiting until 1 week into the season to make that decision has set us back again. Overall, I do think we would have been better off to follow Bepe on this, not AA. Same with Barca. They should have cut Messi loose a couple of years ago. Notice Bayern always seem to know when to sell. It helps that the rest of the Bundie is merely a feeder league for Bayern, but they still know when to capitalize on their players and who to buy from the other teams in the league to keep them ticking over. We used to be able to do that when Moggi was in charge. He used to sell players maybe a year or two early, but he always got good value for them and knew who to replace them with. And that was back when Serie A was the best league in the world. We could use a dose of what Moggi brought today. We have been lousy at selling players ever since.
Finally a win!!!! OK, the opponent wasn't very good but at least the club now know they can win a match. Tough game coming up this weekend and let's hope the real Juve show up.