Thankfully, Juventus’ first foray into the Coppa Italia this season didn’t go anywhere close to how their last fixture in the competition went about nine months earlier.
Business taken care of, folks. Feels great to think that kind of way as compared to the alternative.
That’s because Juventus beat Udinese 2-0 on Tuesday night to advance to the Coppa Italia quarterfinals where either Atalanta or Genoa await in the quarterfinals. It was the kind of win that we hadn’t seen much of this season — a Juventus that was in control and barely let the opposition do much of anything going forward. As much as a couple of Udinese’s best chances were ruled out for offside (thanks to VAR or without VAR), you could say the same thing about a pair of goals that Juventus thought they had scored in the game. Ultimately, a Udinese own goal and a Manuel Locatelli goal from the penalty spot — the third of that kind against Udinese this season — proved to the different as Juve clinched the win in an incredibly comfortable kind of way.
Just go ahead and exhale because there was no Coppa Italia craziness on this night.
Juventus were the favorites to win. Juventus ended up getting the win and did so with some room to spare regardless of how many goals were chalked off by VAR being completely frustrating like only that whole system can promise to be.
Then again, maybe we shouldn’t have been so stressed no matter how Juve’s season has gone to date. Why? Because sometimes there’s facts that speak for themselves …
A perfect 18 for 18 dating back nearly two decades? My goodness, that’s pretty good! Considering the date that this goes back to, it’s not like there were some vintage Juventus squads in there, either. You know, kinda like this Juventus team. But this is what we all expect Juventus to do at this stage of the Coppa Italia. The matchups are set up for the big clubs to advance even with the expected squad rotation that comes with it. And even as Luciano Spalletti said that there would be a good amount of squad rotation against Udinese — and he delivered on that for the most part — but also made it known just how much Juve needed to win this one as well.
Those are both givens. But there’s also part of this team that doesn’t always do what they say they know they need to do going into a game.
But on this night, Juventus made things look relatively smooth just as they did when Udinese visited the Allianz about five weeks ago. This time it was Spalletti on the sidelines and not Massimo Brambilla, but the showing that Juve put out there even with the lineup changes were sound and they were in control of things from the beginning onward. With all the possession they had — especially early — you would have liked there to be more scoring chances created, but Udinese weren’t given much of a chance to do anything at all. Michele Di Gregorio, back in the starting lineup after being ill pretty much all of last week, barely had anything to do and didn’t need to record a single save on the night.
And once Juve got the opening goal on what looked like Jonathan David’s second goal in a week before it was officially ruled on own goal, it felt like only one of those classic Bianconeri screwups would be the thing that prevents them from moving on to the Coppa Italia quarterfinals.
Udinese never got that break, thanks in part to the offside working in Juve’s favor.
No matter what, though, we’re still talking about Juve being in the Coppa Italia and moving on to the quarterfinals. Now just don’t mention what happened in the quarterfinals last season and we’ll be good.
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS