Juventus dominate properly this time, see off Sassuolo

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All of three days ago, Juventus dominated their opponent, but didn’t use that dominance properly and ended up dropping points when they couldn’t convert that dominance to goals.

For a while, Tuesday night’s game against Sassuolo looked like it would be similar. Juve had at least managed to take score first after Pierre Kalulu’s cross was redirected by former Juve NextGen prospect Tarik Muharemovic into his own net 15 minutes in. But, despite once again sealing their opponents into their own half and refusing to let them out, Juventus once again couldn’t put the ball back into the net, seemingly leaving themselves open to paying a heavy price for a single mistake the way they had against Lecce.

The fact that they were at the Mapei Stadium — a place that Juve had lost two straight years before the Neroverdi spent last year in Serie B — jangled the nerves all the more.

But there were two big differences between Tuesday and Saturday. The first is that Juve didn’t make any boneheaded mistakes. The second was that Jonathan David — their most maligned player after his catastrophic penalty miss over the weekend — had his first true big game in a Juventus shirt, capping off an effective performance with an assist and a goal within two minutes of each other to propel the Bianconeri to a 3-0 victory to end the andata and match Roma and Como, who had both won earlier in the day, in order to stay ahead in the race for fourth place.

Luciano Spalletti was unable to carry the 4-2-3-1 formation he used against Lecce over to Tuesday’s match because of injuries at the back. Lloyd Kelly and Francisco Conceição had taken minor knocks on Saturday and weren’t risked on the short turnaround, while Daniele Rugani, Federico Gatti, Jonas Rouhi, Dusan Vlahovic, and Arkadiusz Milik all joined them on the treatment table. With the defense stretched thin, Spalletti was forced to return to the 3-4-2-1. Michele Di Gregorio started in goal, fronted by Kalulu, Bremer, and Teun Koopmeiners. Weston McKennie and Andrea Cambiaso played at wing-back, sandwiching the usual midfield of Manuel Locatelli and Khéphren Thuram. Fabio Miretti joined Kenan Yildiz backing up David in attack.

Sassuolo was managed by former Juve defender and Italy legend Fabio Grosso, who was marking his 400th game as a first-team manager. He was missing a couple of his more recongnizable names, chief among them Domenico Berardi. Cristian Volpato, Filippo Romagna, Daniele Boloca, and Edoardo Pierangolo were also injured, and Woyo Coulibaly was playing for Mali at AFCON. Grosso deployed a 4-3-3, backstopped by goalkeeper Arijanet Muric. Sebastian Walukeiwicz, Jay Idzes, Muharemovic, and Josh Doig made up the back four. Ismaël Koné, Edoardo Iannoni, and Nemanja Matic made up the midfield, while Kristian Thorstvedt and Armand Laurienté flanked Andrea Pinamonti in the attacking trident.

It was actually Sassuolo who registered the first two shots of the game after Juve started fairly sloppily. Walukeiwicz poked a corner over less than two minutes in, and Thorstvedt jumped a bad pass only to fire wide two minutes after that. But soon the general flow of the game became quite clear: Juve going forward, Sassuolo struggling to break out.

In the ninth minute Yildiz stole the ball from Walukeiwicz at the corner of the box and tried to surprise Muric at the near post, but the keeper was able to parry before Cambiaso put the rebound into the side netting from a tight angle. David found Thuram for the first of his six (six!) key passes on the night a few minutes later, but the Frenchman’s shot went righ at Muric.

But the Kosovar keeper could do nothing just after the quarter-hour mark, when Kalulu came forward to aid the attack and sent in a cross. He was looking for the run of Miretti in the middle, but his ball was met by the head of Muharemovic, who was trying to clear but instead glanced it into his own net, far from anywhere where Muric could hope to intervene. The promising young center-back’s mistake gave Juve what they’d never managed at the Allianz over the weekend: a lead.

The next task was to consolidate that lead — which the team had problems doing. David tried to twist a ball in at a tight angle from the right but couldn’t beat Muric, while Yildiz had two shots denied sandwiched around the half-hour mark. The young Turk had another opportunity five minutes before the break, this time hitting a powerful shot across goal that Muric again had to parry, lucky to hit it right at Idzes, who reacted well to clear.

Juve came out of the gate looking to kill the game off, but were still having issues doing just that. Locatelli must have thought he’d spotted Muric off his line a few minutes after kickoff, because he hit a long-distance lob that flew well over the goal, beforee Thuram was sent down the left channel but elected to go himself instead of feeding one of three runners to his right, forcing a relatively easy save out of Muric. Miretti joined the effort and stabbed a square pass from David over from inside the box, and it looked as though the frustration might be starting to mount.

But only two minutes later, David connected with Miretti again, to much better results. McKennie chested a long ball down and passed it to David, who quickly side-footed the ball into the path of Miretti. He tore past Muharemovic and into the right channel, then ripped the ball past Muric and into the far side of the net. It was his first goal in 10 months and his first goal for Juventus in nearly two years.

Within 109 seconds, David had stomped out any chance the hosts might’ve had for a comeback. Pressure from the Canadian forced Idzes into a horrific back pass that the striker pounced on. He dribbled the ball around Muric and kept his cool as he slotted home past Walukeiwicz’s feeble attempt to swipe it off the line. The unity of the team then showed out. After so much criticism—as well as reports that David was an outsider in the locker room—the entire team, on the field and on the bench, mobbed him. Even Spalletti ran downfield to celebrate with the man he’d shown a vote of confidence by starting him again.

He almost added another seconds later when another bad turnover in the Sassuolo box fell to him, but this time he fired high. But at that point it mattered little—the game was well and truly over. Both sides knew they were simply playing out the stretch, and the rhythm of the game reflected it. Sassuolo did finally put a shot on target in the 84th minute when Nicholas Pierini tested Di Gregorio from a direct free kick, then Luca Lipani added another on the ensuing corner that Juve’s keeper again met with a parry.

There was little to do for the defense besides that, and as the final whistle blared out across the Mapei Stadium, the Bianconeri walked toward the traveling fans to celebrate their first win at the ground since 2022, and to closing out the andata in style.

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