A laundry list of missing players, including Paulo Dybala, Giorgio Chiellini, Federico Bernardeschi, and Mattia De Sciglio, saw a few players mixed and matched in different spots. The Biancocelesti were unable to find a way to penetrate without their star forward, while a wasteful Bianconeri side took advantage of two mistakes to pot a pair of penalties in a 2-0 win, vaulting themselves a few places up the table and taking a big result in the first of a week of really important games.Īllegri’s starting formation was listed differently everywhere you turned, with a couple variations on a three man defense being proposed, but was really the weird 4-4-2 hybrid thing he’s been using all year. After 90 minutes, the absences clearly took a bigger toll on the home side. With both teams missing key players - including each team’s lead attacker - Lazio seized possession and kept it - though not quite as much as one would have expected by the end - while Juve looked to stay tight in defense and break out on the counter.
In a country as tactics-obsessed as this one, the column inches wrote themselves.Īs for the game itself, the details went about as you would expect them to. Juve were led into the Stadio Olimpico by Massimiliano Allegri, who the Juve front office had replaced with Sarri in 2019 in an effort to make the team’s football more attacking and attractive as opposed to Allegri’s pragmatic, if somewhat stuffy approach. The subplot was perhaps even juicier, especially in a place like Italy.
Maurizio Sarri, who 18 months ago won what would be the last of nine consecutive titles for Juventus before getting the boot days later amid Champions League defeat and rumors of locker room unrest, welcoming his old team to his new home at Lazio for a first opportunity to get revenge. It was perhaps the easiest headline of the year to write, barring the local derbies.
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