Juventus finally back to winning ways, take home sloppy contest against Monza

Today at 02:05 AM

Neither team was sharp, but Juve pushed ahead and held on for a much-needed victory against the league's bottom side.

Forty-three days.

It had been 43 days since Juventus beat Torino 2-0 at home in the Derby della Mole. Forty-three days since Juventus last won a game in Serie A.

As disgruntled fans and pontificating pundits debated the four consecutive ties in the weeks since, Juve manager Thiago Motta had been trying to find solutions to his team's case of the draws. Things finally started looking up midweek, when a few formations tweaks and the return of some injured players saw Juve treat a low-level opponent like a low-level team.

The hope was that the Bianconeri, when confronted with another such team — the bottom team in the league, who had only won one game the entire season — that they would repeat that performance.

It wasn't quite an exact replica, but the result was far more preferable to the ones we've seen against Venezia and Lecce.

The word that can be used to best describe Juve's tilt with Monza at the U-Power Stadium was sloppy. Both teams looked ragged in both passing and defending, and the decisive goals were both the result of ugly defending that would have a high-school coach's head spinning. There were more than a few awkward moments as Juventus clung to their lead, but they finally took that lead to the final whistle, winning the match 2-1 and taking some good feelings into Christmas.

Injuries still plagued Motta's selection choices. A training-ground ankle sprain saw Danilo miss the trip, joining Timothy Weah, Douglas Luiz, and Arkadiusz Milik as absences. Motta assembled his usual 4-2-3-1. Michele Di Gregorio made his return to the U-Power for the first time since leaving Monza over the summer, anchoring a defense made up of Nicolò Savona, Federico Gatti, Pierre Kalulu, and Weston McKennie. Manuel Locatelli joined Teun Koopmeiners in the midfield pivot. Nico González started his first game since his injury, playing in the No. 10 position. Francisco Conceição and Kenan Yildiz flanked him in support of Dusan Vlahovic.

Legendary Italy defender Alessandro Nesta was under severe pressure given Monza's struggles in the table. He was also dealing with a cascade of injuries. Milan Djuric, Matteo Pessina, Roberto Gagliardini, Alessio Cragno, Andrea Petagna, Samuele Vignato, and Mattia Valoti were injured, while Daniele Maldini was suspended. Stefano Turati started in goal at the bottom of a 3-4-2-1 formation. Danilo D'Ambrosio, Andrea Carboni, and Pablo Marí made up the defense. Pedro Pereira and and Giorgios Kyiriakopolous played at the wing-back position, bracketing the midfield of Warren Bondo and and Alessandro Bianco. Gianluca Caprari and Samuele Birindelli backed up Dany Mota in attack.

The sloppiness that characterized the game took hold early. Monza managed a quick two-man break within seconds after the start of the game. Less than a minute later, D'Ambrosio cleared a ball straight to the feet of Yildiz, who kicked at it more out of reflex than anything else, flying the ball just over the bar.

The early parts of the game saw Juve take the initiative. They pretty well hemmed in the home team, getting to every attempted clearance and pushing the ball back to the attack. Turati was forced into his first save on six minutes, and less than 10 minutes later the keeper had to flip the ball over the top in order to clean up his own mess when he punched a corner straight at González. He wasn't so lucky on the ensuing set piece, as McKennie was left standing alone right front of him and swung a boot at the delivery to open the scoring from point-blank range.

That didn't mean Juve were dominating completely. Once in a while some sloppy passing gifted Monza some good opportunities to counter, but managed to extinguish any fires before they got too much to handle.

Things looked like they were going quite well indeed — the way we expected them to get going by now against this kind of team.

Then, an RKO came from outta nowhere.

Monza's goal was a clinic in what not to do when you defend. Carboni used a triangle with Caprari and Kyiriakopolous to get himself completely free on the attacking left. Savona was forced to confront the Greek wing-back, leaving Carboni marauding unchallenged as Conceição rushed to make up ground. Meanwhile, in the box, a particular quirk of the way McKennie had been playing at left-back came back to bite the Bianconeri. With McKennie often drifting inside to join the midfield, it could leave his flank wide open — and Birindelli took full advantage, drifting in completely unmarked and meeting Carboni's cross with a fantastic volley for the equalizer. It was a serendipitous moment, as the astute Juventino would of course remember that Birindelli's father, Alessandro, played nearly 300 games with the club over 11 years starting in the early 1990s.

An already wobbly Juve started looking a bit more discombobulated after letting up the goal. They passed the ball into danger a few times at the back but managed to get out of it, and their press, while still there, started to produce fewer results. But they still managed to dictate the way the game went outside of those bumbles.

When Juve retook the lead with six minutes to go, it was thanks to defending almost as shambolic. A cross to the back post by Savona was put back across by McKennie. Birindelli stuck out a foot to meet it but only popped it up in the air. Locatelli got position on Carboni in the six yard box, cushioning it down for González, who slipped through a pair of defenders to slam it into the box from four yards.

Koopmeiners made a double block to keep the Biancorossi from making an instant response, and Conceição lost the ball just in front of his own box and was relieved to see Carboni fire the ball straight at Di Gregorio as the half ended.

The unsteady play continued on both sides after the break. Three minutes into the second half Juve offered Bianco a lane to simply run to the top of the box and take a shot, which Di Gregorio pushed wide. In the same minute the ball zipped down the other end of the field and saw Turati reject a shot from Yildiz that was headed for the top near corner.

Turati began exhibiting signs of extreme instability in the Monza goal, refusing to try to catch balls and instead parrying them. But starting around the hour mark Juve's attack stopped creating shots quite so frequently. Part of that likely had to do with the withdrawal of González, whose minutes were clearly still being managed after his injury. Possession began to swing to Monza's favor for the first time in the game, but the home side were unable to put themselves in position to truly threaten another equalizer. Di Gregorio made his box his own, claiming numerous crosses before they ever had the chance to hurt. The shots that did come came after the defense had forced the shooter into a bad position, forcing their shots off target.

Khephren Thuram and Bianco traded off-target shots as the game drew to its conclusion. Juve's defense occasionally looked discombobulated enough to make you hold your breath and pray that you wouldn't see another late equalizer ruin their day, but they never truly allowed Monza to get into position to actually get it. Yildiz killed off the last few seconds of stoppage time with a mazy run that ended in another Turati parry, and when the whistle finally blew, the Bianconeri had finally tasted their victory in the league.

LE PAGELLE

MICHELE DI GREGORIO - 7. Made the saves he needed to make and controlled the airspace in his box all day long. Left out to dry by shambolic defending on Monza's goal.

NICOLÒ SAVONA - 6. Led the team in clearances and started the sequence that led to the winning goal with a good cross.

FEDERICO GATTI - 6. Didn't misfire with a single pass and was always in the right place when things looked like they were about to go sideways.

PIERRE KALULU - 5.5. Not the greatest of days for Kalulu, who made a couple of mistakes marking and passing and didn't pick up Birindelli on the goal until it was too late — although you could wonder about McKennie's whereabouts there.

WESTON McKENNIE - 6. Matriculated himself up the field as the substitutions shifted him around, but there were some questions about how he played left-back, especially his drift into the midfield. To be fair, it's a move Cambiaso makes a lot, and he did the same thing midweek against Cagliari with much more success, and he was the only player on the team who had more than one tackle or interception. But without the goal we would've been looking at a lower grade.

TEUN KOOPMEINERS - 6. Excellent delivery on the corner for his first goal, which is something that has been a bit of a worry for him up to this point, He completed 97.3 percent of his passes and looked more comfortable coming up from deep than he ever has at the No. 10. Two important blocks late in the first half too. Hopefully the adductor injury that he came off for at halftime is nothing.

MANUEL LOCATELLI - 6. The move he made to slide in front of his defender and take down that loose ball in the air was excellent. The lax defending had something to do with it, but he took what he was given and put his team back on top.

FRANCISCO CONCEIÇÃO - 5.5. Co-led the team in key passes and had three dribbles, but his shortcomings defensively were laid bare once or twice, especially on Monza's goal, where he wasn't anywhere close to being able to help Savona with Carboni's run.

NICO GONZÁLEZ - 7. Put five of his six shots on target and was a general nuisance to Monza's defense the entire night. The passing could perhaps have been a little better, but he does things in the attacking third that no one else on the team can do.

KENAN YILDIZ - 6. Made three key passes and forced Turati to work a little bit, but one wishes he'd been playing through the middle again.

DUSAN VLAHOVIC - 5.5. A little late on a couple of balls into the middle of the box that could've provided him with a goal. Worked hard though, and put together two key passes as well. Clearly frustrated with himself after he came off.

SUBS

KHEPHREN THURAM - 5.5. Played a little bit out of control at times and lost the ball when he could have kept possession and given the defense a moment's pause.

ANDREA CAMBIASO - 6. Good to see him back on the field so soon. Sured up the left flank when he took McKennie's place and was able to more properly interpret the role.

VASILIJE ADZIC - NR. Took the place of a false nine and didn't really get much to do, although he won as many aerial duels (2) in six minutes plus as everyone else had in 90.

SAMUEL MBANGULA - NR. Didn't have much chance to try to push anything downfield.

NICOLÒ FAGIOLI - NR. HE LIVES! Well, enough to go in at the last second to kill some time with a sub. He was never going to do anything in the time he had.

MANAGER ANALYSIS

Motta continued to tinker with things as his menu of players to plug in has grown. Of the the three main experiments that he undertook in midweek, two remained. Using McKennie at left-back was more a move of necessity after Danilo's training-ground ankle sprain, and didn't produce the desired results.

But keeping Teun Koopmeiners in the midfield pivot (until he got hurt, seriously did we end up on the wrong end of Paul Pogba's witch doctor or something?) is an idea that has serious merit. Koopmeiners looks a lot freer and more able to use his abilities while pushing out from the back, as he has more people to work off of than just Vlahovic ahead of him. It will potentially raise questions as to who to pair with him, as the Locatelli/Thuram unit had seemed to be working quite well, but to get your premier signing into a place where he can play the best will be an ultimate positive.

The one move that didn't persist was the return of Kenan Yildiz into the trequartista role. Yildiz—and Juve—have had some of their best overall games with the young Turk playing in the middle, where he has a natural affinity to act as a facilitator.

Fortunately, I don't think this was a scenario where Thiago Motta simply discarded the move. I think it more likely that he wanted to experiment a little bit with Gonzalez, who hasn't been at his disposal much at all this season, and see what he can do. Gonzalez is an incredibly versatile forward who can take multiple roles, and the desire to figure out how it can work is understandable. Hopefully Yildiz can get back central later on in the year—Motta may try to tailor the formations based on the opponent—but with so many injuries Motta hasn't had much time to actually tinker, so it's perfectly acceptable to see what he actually has.

LOOKING AHEAD

Juve have the week to rest and celebrate Christmas before a huge home game against a Fiorentina side that looks completely different under Raffaele Palladino. They then take a completely unnecessary trip to Saudi Arabia for the expanded Supercoppa, where they will face AC Milan in the semifinal.

Buon Natale to everyone!

***Author's note: due to the unfortunate confluences in scheduling, the usual Airing of Grievances for Festivus will not be able to happen this year, but a quick rundown of those who would've been on the list: Massimiliano Allegri, Paul Pogba, the executives who are running the players into the ground with too many games, and a minor one for Cristiano Giuntoli for the sale of players like Matias Soule and Dean Huijsen***