Throughout this week the Champions League has produced some very exciting matches that were filled with spectacular comeback wins as well as a heavy dose of goals scored. On the other hand, there is Juventus who has been relying on their strong defensive approach to squeak out wins on the pitch lately.
The manager of the Juventus football club, Massimiliano Allegri, has been aging quickly as he watched his squad grind out another victory with a final score of 1 to 0 against Zenit St. Petersburg on Wednesday, October 20th, 2021. This just so happens to be Juventus’ 4th consecutive match in which they won with a final tally of 1 to nil.
This Sunday, October 24th, 2021 Juve’s intense defense will have its will tested early and often when they play Inter Milan. The outstanding and potent offensive attack of the Serie A champion, Inter Milan, will look to defeat their native rival Juventus on Sunday in the Derby d’Italia (Derby of Italy). Inter Milan’s past 5 Serie A contests have resulted in an amazing 22 goals scored, although not all of those were netted by the Nerazzurri.
On Tuesday, October 19th, 2021 Inter defeated Sheriff with a final score of 3 to 1, but that was just Inter Milan’s 1stwin during this Champions League, while Juventus has recorded 3 victories out of 3 matches and Juve has yet been forced by their opponents to concede in the highly – contested Champions League competition.
This highly – anticipated battle on Sunday between Juventus and Inter Milan will feature a clash of two very different styles of play from both sides of this match – up. The Juventus football club is currently convinced they are on the right path to success following a very rocky beginning to playing back under Allegri, who returned to manage Juventus only 2 years after he was fired by the organization.
The Bianconeri are slowly but steadily ascending up the table as the sit in 7th place at the moment, and Fidanzata d’Italia is just a mere 3 points behind the 3rd place Inter Milan right now. Unfortunately for Juventus, they are trailing the leading Napoli by 10 points as Napoli has impressively come out victorious in all 8 of their matches.
Inter galloped to the league championship title last season which ended Juventus’ previous streak of 9 consecutive Serie A championship titles. The Bianconeri under the control of manager Andrea Pirlo just barely snuck into the Champions League places by finishing a disappointing 4th place. A whole lot has changed for both football clubs since then, especially the departure of one of the all – time great footballers, Cristiano Ronaldo, from Juventus. Although it sounds really bad to lose an amazing magician of a football player such as Ronaldo, the Juventus center – back and captain, Leonardo Bonucci, has consistently expressed publicly that he believes his side is better off without Cristiano right now.
This week Bonucci had a cleverly camouflaged dig at Inter Milan when he said it was more the case that Juve lost the Serie A League title rather than the Inter Milan winning it and that Juventus made self – inflicted mistakes as opposed to Nerazzurri being the better team.
These comments were recently laughed off by the Inter Milan midfielder, Arturo Vidal, who has won 4 league titles with Juve at the beginning of its dominating presence in the football landscape.
Media Statements
“We have shown that we have the right attitude and when there is a spirit of sacrifice and humility on the part of the whole group, the results arrive,” the captain of the Juventus football club, Leonardo Bonucci, proclaimed. “We have got back the will to suffer, to have patience, to win games without conceding. Now our focus turns to the match on Sunday and to the championship to recover the ground lost at the beginning of the season. A great game awaits us on Sunday. Even winning 1 – 0 is important.”
Bonucci goes on to say, “In the recent past we had lost this Juve characteristic, we played with a great champion in Ronaldo and we wanted to put him in condition to always do well, and maybe we lost this will to sacrifice ourselves together, thinking that he would resolve all the matches. In this, the coach has been good in helping us find again the right humility which we need to get back to winning ways.”
“They have the chance to have their revenge,” the Inter midfielder, Arturo Vidal, responded. “We’ll see on the field who is the strongest this year.”
Sources:
Matar, Daniella. “Clash of styles as defensive Juventus visits attacking Inter”. The Associated Press. October 21, 2022.