Everything that the Derby d’Italia was, this game was not. This game was not end-to-end. This game was not exciting. There were some exciting little bonuses thrown in there — Marko Pjaca! Yay! — but the sum total of this was a viewing experience that made me want to take a spork from somewhere where they still have sporks and then carve out my eyeballs.
Juventus won, though. So that’s good!
I watched this game after work — here in the central time zone in the USA — and, unfortunately, I had seen the score. So, not only did I know that Juve won the game 2-0, but I also knew the goals came in the second half. But I still watched the first half! I want a prize. I also would like to personally ostracize Crotone for their tactic. There was literally a time — 41st minute — when all eleven of Crotone’s players were camped in their own penalty box. I’m sure this happened more than that one time, but holy hockey sticks what a dreadful approach. Granted, it was basically their only option, and it worked for a half. But I don’t have to like it.
Aperitivi
A tantalizing collection of titillating tidbits.
- I watched this game in Spanish, because my damn fuboTV recording would not play. I understand only a tiny bit of Spanish, but I listened anyway so I could hear names if I looked away from the screen, scribbling a note. But it was beautiful when Mario Mandzukic scored and the announcer wailed, “GOLAGOLAGOLAGOLA!!!”
- Our 4-2-3-1 was a 2-4-3-1 for much of the first half, with Dani Alves and Kwadwo Asamoah pushing so far up the pitch. Crotone wouldn’t send their forwards two-thirds up the field, damn it.
- Pjaca is big, and hungry, and he’ll be good.
- I’m 85 percent sure that the font on the back of the Crotone jerseys is Comic Sans, and it makes me want to take a plane to Calabria and give someone a very stern talking to.
- Thirty-first-minute camera flashes to some good-looking women. Classic bored camera guy.
- In the 67th minute, the beIN score graphic flashed a passing statistic: “Wrong Passes.” (Juve had more than Crotone, but that’s probably because they passed a billion times more.) But the point here is I love the idea of passes being “wrong.” Like, not “errant” or “incomplete” or something, but “wrong.” Antithetical to the more fiber of the universe.
Onto the awards:
Sidewalk of Turin Award
For a weak(ish) performance masked by other factors.
There really shouldn’t be an award for this, because it was a game against Crotone and even if all the Bianconeri played the worst games of their career it might’ve looked similar, but I’m going to hand this out to someone anyway and you might get mad.
Daniele Rugani — I’m in agreement with some people I’ve seen here and elsewhere — is world class. He’s confident with and without the ball. He marks with the best of them. He anticipates, does everything. But at the end of the game, he fouled a Crotone player pretty hard in the box. It went uncalled, but I thought it should’ve been a penalty.
Juve were already up 2-0. But hey, has to go to someone. Sorry, pal.
Piazza San Carlo Award
For a potentially overlooked yet stellar showing.
If you go to the 58th minute, you’ll see Paulo Dybala take the ball a little ways past midfield, take a few touches, and spin a defender onto his rump. It was the football equivalent to an Allen Iverson crossover. It was one of several absolutely humiliating moments for Crotone.
Dybala was really good Wednesday night. He didn’t get a goal — although he nearly did with that cute flick at the end of the first half — but he came close to a pair of assists. In the 31st minute, after a botched back-and-forth with another Juve player wherein the ball fell to a defender, Dybala said in his beautiful brain, “No, I will rectify my mistake” — probably in Spanish — at which point he did, in fact, rob the defender, gather the ball, and slice a perfect cross to a streaking Gonzalo Higuaín who...shanked it.
It’s amazing and stupidly lucky that we have three differently talented strikers in Mario, Paulo, and Gonzalo, and although La Joya was the only one who missed out on the scoring sheet I thought he played quite well.
Lingotto Award
For a notable demonstration in both grit and flair.
Tomás Rincón! Yes! I have a huge, shameless crush on Rincón. He is, of course, not our best player. There’s nothing that he does particularly amazingly, other than try really, really hard, and not make boneheaded mistakes. I think there’s real value in that. I know there’s been some grumbling as to why we picked this dude up from Genoa, but after seeing him play all 90 on Wednesday, I’m all for it. He’s not going to play in the marquee matchups, but he fits in very fluidly.
Also, his assist to Higuaín was precision defined. Well done, little motor man.
Parco Valentino Award
For an urbane demeanor distributed amongst the squad.
I’m splitting this award between the two goal scorers. I know it’s not typically a goal-scoring kind of award — more of a Gigi Buffon or Giorgio Chiellini type thing — but I thought Mandžukić and Higuaín held the team together with their focus, and Mr. No Good got the goal that’s been a long time coming.
The danger in a game like Crotone, even though it’s a danger with a very, very small chance of manifesting, is that the later you score the more frustrated you become, and if you become very frustrated you might make a mistake, or a string of mistakes, that allow a counter-attacking goal to someone even as poor as Crotone. But these two guys didn’t let that happen. They patiently prodded again and again. Then they produced.
(Side not for Higuaín: holy herring the number he pulled on Crotone keeper Alex Cordaz was malicious. He just made him look so stupid. It was nice to see that kind of flair and tact with the ball, something I more typically associate with Dybala, whose embarrassing of an opponent I described above. Man, though. I feel so bad for that goalie.)
Giuseppe Garibaldi Award
For the man of the match.
Leonardo Bonucci!
Maybe there will be some grumbles. That’s okay. Not that he was under pressure much, but I don’t think I saw Bonucci make a single mistake defensively. That’s reason No. 1. (Rugani was great, saved for the missed foul in the box, in my estimation.) Reason No. 2 is that the first goal found its origin in Bonucci’s movement forward. Even in a game like this, both Rugani and Bonucci showed splendid restraint in not pushing forward too greedily. In one of the two or three times that Bonucci chose to take a few touches downfield through opponents, the ball ended up moving through several Juventus players into the back of the net.
Forza, ragazzi.