Juventus knew the situation when they took the field for warmups Sunday night at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara. With Lazio and Roma both winning earlier in the day, they needed some sort of positive result to get back into fourth place after the two Roman sides’ wins resulting in the Bianconeri dropping down into sixth before kickoff.
Well …
Juventus got one of the positive results that kept them in fourth place, but not the one that had them thinking was possible after Khephren Thuram struck in the ninth minute for his fourth league goal of the season to put his team in front. After that, though, Juventus had to defend — and defend a lot. And with a defense that is nowhere in the same galaxy as one that’s to be considered full strength, that lead looked wobbly for much of the next 45 minutes before Bologna tied things up through Remo Freuler’s deflected shot left Michele Di Gregorio stranded 10 minutes into the second half.
It all ended up being a 1-1 draw that has my brain feeling a little bit like Juve are lucky to have gotten a point rather than dropping even more points from a winning position than they already have this season.
The point in Bologna means that Juventus are still in fourth place — barely. There are now three clubs sitting on 63 points, with Juventus ahead of Roma and Lazio on goal differential. With Roma continuing to work their magic under Claudio Ranieri and Lazio hosting Juve next weekend, things are bound to get more and more chaotic with three matchdays to go.
The problem was, this could have been a massive win for Juventus’ hold on fourth place. Instead, it turned out to be a night where they created very little after Thuram — with a decent amount of help from Bologna keeper Łukasz Skorupski — gave them the lead to cap a strong opening 10 minutes to the proceedings.
After that, though, Juventus’ new-look attack created very little. (Well, that actually counted. There’s still Andrea Cambiaso barely being offside that certainly looms large, too.)
That was always going to be a problem against a Bologna side that continue to show that they get better as a game goes on. It’s a big reason why they entered Sunday night’s matchup with Juventus having recovered a league-high 17 points from a losing position this season — something that they only added to against Igor Tudor’s side that tried like hell to hold onto their 1-0 lead despite all of the possession that the home side had.
But as much as Juve tried to be strong at the back and become just the second team to beat Bologna at the Dall’Ara this season, the home side’s building momentum only gave you a sinking kind of feeling. Then it arrived in the 54th minute, and away went Juve’s lead because of it.
Was trying to potentially corto muso a win against a Bologna team that has developed such a reputation for late-game theatrics the right choice from Tudor? I don’t really know. If Juve’s defense was in much better shape than it clearly is in its current state I would probably feel better about it, but not now. With how little Juve’s attack was creating, trying to grind out a win after going ahead 1-0 might have been the only way Tudor thought his team could have done it.
But, as we’ve said so many times before, you walk that fine line between doing things effectively and having one moment of luck going against you — like with Veiga’s blocked shot attempt not being completely successful — and things working against you.
That’s what proved to be the case Sunday night. And now things are even tighter between fourth place and sixth than they were even before Matchday 35 got underway.
Goodness, these next three weeks are going to be much more stressful than they should have been. But this is the bed that Juventus have made for themselves. Now they have to lay in it and try and prevent the Europa League anthem from blaring at the Allianz Stadium next season.
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS
- Do you want to guess which Juventus player attempted the most passes against Bologna? Go ahead. I’ll give you a guess or two before I tell you. Do it. Guess who you think is there.
- Got your guess? Because here’s the answer: Michele Di Gregorio. Yup, that’s right — Juventus’ goal keeper attempted the most passes Sunday night. I ain’t kidding you, folks. I double confirmed it on WhoScored and Sofascore. That’s just how this one went.
- All of this while Di Gregorio made all of one save. And you have to believe he had a pretty good shot at saving Freuler’s shot if it wasn’t for the somewhat wicked and very unfortunate deflection off Renato Veiga’s leg.
- I mean, you can’t blame Veiga for trying to block the shot — it’s the natural thing to do. A couple of centimeters to the left rather than towards his shin and that ball is probably completely blocked and who knows what happens over the following 35-40 minutes.
- Who am I kidding? Bologna probably score a goal at some point of the second half because that’s just how much better they were than Juventus after halftime.
- Or maybe Alberto Costa actually connects with the ball in the six-yard box and Juventus somehow end up winning no matter what happens with the deflection off Veiga’s leg. At this point, I don’t really know what to think as I type this because it’s just a whole bunch of what ifs and that’s just getting us all into trouble and unnecessary thoughts of things that didn’t actually happen.
- That said, the Costa chance that went for naught had a higher xG (0.38) than Bologna had in the entire second half (0.30), so what do I even know about this sport sometimes.
- More fun with passing numbers: Pierre Kalulu completed the most passes of any player against Bologna. It was a grand total of … 23.
- Only two Juventus players completed 20 passes or more: Kalulu (23) and Weston McKennie (20). That’s it. That’s the list.
- The unfortunate blocked shot attempt aside, Veiga put in another big-time effort at the back. He recorded 18 defensive actions, 15 clearances and had a couple of interceptions. That’s obviously partly a by-product of Juve’s ultra-defensive approach in the second half, but man he was all over the place in a game in which he needed to be.
- This one certainly had the feel on multiple occasions that referee Daniele Doveri didn’t exactly have much control over the match, right? Both teams had some legit gripes.
- This has to be a second half of the season to forget for a lot of players, but Cambiaso has to be up there at the very top. Between all of his ankle issues and now what looked to be some sort of muscle injury that forced him off with 20 minutes to go, it’s just another issue he’s had to deal with on top of everything.
- Samuel Mbangula, nice to see you for the first time in a while.
- Vasilije Adzic, nice to see you for the first time in a while, too.
- The 13-plus minutes off the bench is the most amount of time Douglas Luiz has played in a single game since February. That’s not great, folks.
- Tudor had six outfield players off the bench at his disposal. He used five of them, with only the two backup goalkeepers and a certain Jonas Rouhi the only ones who didn’t play.
- Seven Bologna players had more touches than any Juventus player. That’s not good.
- With this draw, Juventus basically have to win out to get into the top four, right? Any more dropped points and you can probably kiss Champions League qualification goodbye. You just can’t afford to rely on others for help at this point. And it’s not like Juve are helping their own cause, either.
- It just makes you think of all those dropped points this season. Things could have been so much different if even a couple of these 15 draws in the league were turned into wins.
- But Juve are now feeling the effects of them now — and having to completely grit their teeth to secure a place in the top four because of it.
