Juventus Women storm past Pink Bari to move one step closer to another Scudetto

Edoardo Siddi, the man behind the microphone on Juventus TV for all of the Juventus Women matches again this season, went to Instagram following the Bianconere’s latest win on Sunday and had a message for Cristiana Girelli.

The gist of it: Your goals are the reason I will have a sore throat tomorrow.

Blame it on the whole team, too.

Indeed, Girelli’s latest goal fest helped the Juve women record a dominant 9-1 win over Pink Bari. In her first start since suffering a very rough-looking injury in the first leg of the Coppa Italia semifinals against Roma a couple of weeks ago, Girelli stole the headlines with her personal poker against a Pink Bari side that had absolutely no answer for the Juve attack — especially in the second half — and saw the champions drop seven goals on the visitors in the second half. One week after setting the Serie A Femminile record for consecutive wins, Juventus Women matched a club record for wins to begin a season (17) with Sunday’s victory. equaling the total from their first-ever season.

It was just waves of players going forward after Juve took a 2-0 lead through their two Sweden natives, Lina Hurtig and Linda Sembrant. Goal after goal, they just continued to pour it on. And then Girelli dropped this effort on us to fire home a Maria Alves cross for her second goal of the day:

Photo by Filippo Alfero - Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images

Oh, that’s just rude. That’s just ... brilliant.

And Girelli wasn’t even the only Italian striker to score four goals on Sunday, with Valentina Giacinti absolutely taking over the Milan Derby and scoring all of Milan’s goals in their 4-1 win over Inter. (Obligatory LOL INTER because those are the rules.)

In this meeting of first place against last place, the team at the top of the Serie A Femminile table looked every bit the part as they took another step toward a fourth straight league title. With Milan’s win over Inter, Juventus’ lead still stands at six points with five games to play, but outside of dates with Roma and Inter to close out the season, the Bianconere’s schedule looks rather favorable to ensure that they head into the final couple of games with that same six-point lead at the very least.

And with the way they played Sunday, that is definitely a possibility.

(There’s also the second leg of the Coppa Italia semifinals where there’s a 2-1 aggregate deficit to try and reverse — hey, where have we heard that before?! — next month, but we’ll worry about that when we get there. I’m guessing Roma is thinking the same thing.)

As much as this was about Girelli’s four-goal outburst in the second half, to see Juve take care of business and head into the international break with a head of steam to finish the final month-plus of the season on the right kind of note.

Plus Girelli had to get her goal-per-game ratio back up over one a game. I think she took care of that with plenty of room to spare.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

• Seven goals in the second half. SEVEN.
• So one was an own goal, but still. That’s a lot of goals in one half.
• SO MANY GOALS.
• Girelli scored four goals. It really could have been more if not for some heroics in the Pink Bari goal. Some of those saves in the first half were big-time stuff.
• With her four-goal performance, Girelli officially surpassed her goal total from last season. And it was last season when she surpassed her goal total from the season before. Basically what I’m trying to say is that it’s a good thing they signed her to a contract extension — not that there was any doubt she was going to be leaving to begin with, though — because she’s been simply fantastic ever since she arrived at Juventus and is only getting better.
• The race to be Serie A Femminile’s top goal scorer between Girelli (20 goals) and Giacinti (16 goals) is going to be fun as hell to watch the final month of the season. And it’s going to be especially fun since Juve doesn’t have to play Milan in said final month of the season.
• When the Swedes get on the scoresheet, usually good things happen. That’s what happened in the first half, and then good things continued to happen.
• Soon-to-be mom Hurtig now has seven goals in league play with her opener Sunday, pushing her to second on the team behind Girelli. It’s a pretty good showing seeing as she wasn’t getting consistent playing time early in the season. But once she settled in with this team, she’s been fantastic. What a signing.
• SARA GAMA BACK.
• And a belated happy birthday to our beloved capitano as well.
• Rita Guarino is pushing all of the right buttons right now. She’s getting players rest, she’s allowing some of the key depth pieces to get a good amount of minutes and she’s setting her team up to win in recent weeks despite some of her most important players missing games due to injury. That’s the sign you’ve got one hell of a team, but also one hell of a coach that is providing them the right kind of foundation to succeed in.
• Cecilia Salvai can jump. Here’s proof from her goal.
• What else can you say about a game that finishes 9-1? Nothing much other than I sure am glad my favorite team was the one on ‘9’ rather than on the ‘1,’ that’s fore sure.