The result is not what we were hoping for as it now puts extra pressure on Juventus in the second leg in Rome. The game started off promising with an attempt in the first 45 second by Claudio Marchisio, but it was quickly snuffed out by Marchetti. The first half was more of this, chances by Juve bt great goalkeeping by the keeper to deny them.
Juve had a slightly weakened squad with Andrea Pirlo, Nickolas Bendtner, Asamoah, Quagliarella, Pepe and Chiellini all out with injuries or suspensions. But that can’t be an excuse as Lazio were without their deadly striker; Miroslav Klose, and to be honest, I did breathe a sigh of relief upon hearing that!
That didn’t exactly have the impact I had desired, after some chances by Leonardo Bonucci and Paul Pogba went amiss Lazio grew more confident and more organise in their play. And worse was to come for fans of The Old Lady as Bonnuci was hobbling about the pitch. Antonio Conte had used this game to use some less used squad players like Federico Peluso and Luca Marrone, the latter was a bit shaky and at one point almost scored an own goal, but Andrea Barzagli was there to mop up. Marrone is not as comfortable in defence as he is in midfield and it showed.
During the first 45 minute Juve had do many chance that went begging and it looked more than likely that they were going to made to regret theses misses. But on the 63rd Peluso got on the end of a Juve corner and scored his first goal as a Juve player, and boy was it an important one! The funny thing was that from the side it looked as though he was going to be replaced by Mirku Vucinic.
Vucinic did eventually come on, but he seemed rather lazy and a few times he was unable to hold up the ball and gave it straight back to Lazio, much to the annoyance of Vidal. Having spoken a lot about Juventus’ missed chances, it was more to do with Fedrico Marchetti’s cat like reflexes than the strikers not working hard enough, at one point it looked as though the ball was in but the keeper quickly changed direction and clawed it away.
Late on in the game, the tension was rising as Lazio were starting to believe they could get an advantage, and on the 83rd minute Stefano Mauri got the wrong side of De Ceglie and while De Ceglie was trying to stop the man, Mauri toe poked it across the line to equalise on the night and now in a weeks’ time it will be advantage Lazio.
So all in all, not a complete disaster, but Conte does have a few things to sort out and one of them is Vucinic!
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