Celtic V Juventus

This was not just a game for the Juventus fans But fans of Italian football. The Italian game had to sacrifise a European spot to the Germans, so they had only one other Italian team in there and that's Milan, and the face Barcelona which is no easy feat! Juve had been out of the European scene for a few years now and had to entertain, and they sure did!

Alessandro Matri scored within 3 minutes, even though Claudio Marchisio came running in to make sure the ball crossed the line, replays showed that it crossed the line first time. Marchisio did have another shot soon after, yet it went wide, had that gone in it would have calmed some nerve, most notable mine!

Celtic were a little too physical, especially with Andrea Pirlo, who was showing some rare signs of anger. Celtic were obviously told that if they stop Pirlo they would stop The Old Lady from working their magic, and that did to frustrate the away side, but what Celtic failed to take into account was that Arturo Vidal, Claudio Marchisio and even Leonarrdo Bonucci are rather good at passing the ball.

The Scottish side will have some complaints, most notably the marking at corners by Stephen Lichtsteiner. He was lucky to get away with his antics, but what people forget is that the Celtic player was trying to cheat, you cannot get in front of the keeper like that. This is one of the ways Celtic got that famous win against Barcelona, they kept one man in front of the keeper to knock the ball down for Samaras to get. The Bianconeri had studied Celtic and were not going to be so easily done by the Scots. However Stephen could have been a little more subtle about it, he risked leaving his team with 10 men.

The first half ended 1-0, which left Celtic with a lot of work to do. The second half saw mostly Celtic pressure and even though the stats may say they had more shots on goal, they were never going to trouble Gianluigi Buffon. Juve let Celtic just tire themselves out with speculative shots and let them run after loose ball and on the 77th minute Marchsio got his name on the score sheet with a beautifully taken goal. And to kill off the game,Mirku Vucinic added a third on the 83rd minute.

Even though Juve seem well and truly through they sill have a bit to sort out in their game, and you never really know, I'm sure Milan fans remember that famous night in Istanbul!