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Juventus give PSG double trouble
This week saw a mammoth clash between two clubs & managers who have gone at each other hammer and tonge over the years as top of the table Juventus hosted, then, 4th placed PSG as FFO witnessed another battle between Andy Banks & Simon ‘Ed’ Clarke.
It’s been as strange season for both clubs, with Juventus leading the pack in EFL 1 after 27 games but out of both the Champions League & the EFL Cup while powerhouse PSG have struggled in EFL 1 this campaign while they find themselves back in another EFL Cup final and are just 90 minutes away from a third successive Champions League final place with just AC Milan standing in their way after a 2-2 draw at the Parc des Princes stadium on Wednesday evening.
Juventus have spent most of the season milling around the top of the table but only recently have hit top spot with main challengers Real Madrid’s form suffering of late with the reigning champions dropping points against the likes of Napoli, Atletico Madrid & Bayern Munich while PSG haven’t tasted the top 3 in what feels like months with the French outfit being as low as 8th place during the first half of the season.
While Juventus have been consistent and have taken advantage of Real Madrid’s slip in form to take top spot for now, PSG have been attempting to claw their way back into the title mix but with the gap to top spot being a whopping 11 points prior to the Round 28 fixture, nothing short of a win would do for the former EFL 1 champions.
This Round 28 fixture would be the two club’s second and final meeting of the season. This is quite the contrast to last season in which the clubs met no fewer than 5 times with PSG dumping Juventus out of both the Champions League (At the semi final stage) and the EFL Cup. (In the final)
The previous game between the two clubs had ended in a shock Juventus victory all the way back in Round 9 when PSG were sniffing around/at the top of the league looking for another EFL 1 title after the departure of long time rivals Derek Hughes (From AS Roma) & Steven K Talbot.(From Real Madrid)
Clark had previously been very critical of the decisions to name Hamza Sidiqui & Ian Greaves as Hughes & Tablot’s replacements and was extremely confident of his team’s ability to recapture the EFL 1 crown and up until that first game he Juventus it was looking like he might have a point but a 1-0 victory for Juventus, courtesy of MOTM Joao_Felix’s 21st minute goal (1 of only 2 Juventus shots on target in that game) would see the favourites for the league title spiral out of control. Dropping points regularly from there until around the mid season mark, where they finally started to play like everyone knows they can do but by then the gap to the teams at the top of the table had grown bigger and bigger and the title was surely lost for this season.
Now onto this weeks game, with all eyes on this game as the people knew the history of this fixture as well as the history between the two managers and it didn’t disappoint.
Early signs showed that PSG had come to Turin to attack Juventus with everything they had, perhaps an unwise move as Juventus seemed content with sitting back and hitting their visitors on the counter attack and with the best defensive record in the league, Andy Banks must have been confident in his team’s ability to keep the best team in world football out and that’s exactly what they did in those early stages, with a huge helping hand from goalkeeper and eventual MOTM M_Carnesecchi who in total made 7 vital saves from the PSG frontline.
It seemed for everyone watching the game that it would be only a matter of time until the visitors took the lead, however with 7 minutes left in the first half former PSG midfielder E_Smith_Rowe played a one-two with a teammate before unleashing a thunderbolt effort into the top corner of D_Costa’s goal leaving him no chance of saving the effort.
The Allianz Stadium erupted with pure ecstasy as top of the table Juventus took a shock lead completely against the run of play.
Banks shouted instructions from the bench to his players and an already deep line played out by Juventus seemed to get deeper and deeper with the hosts showing no real sign of wanting to attack their opponents.
Half time came and went and in the second half, it seemed like Banks’ defensive, what we have we hold, tactic was going to backfire as for the first 15 minutes of the second period it was non stop wave after wave of PSG attacks & pressure but M_Carnesecchi held firm when the PSG attackers managed to get past the pack of defensive players that Juventus had employed to keep the clean sheet intact.
PSG sustained the pressure right until the full time whistle but Juventus held on to record another famous victory of their bitterest rivals to complete a league double over the once great French team.
This victory coupled with Inter Milan’s 1-0 victory over struggling Sporting Lisbon drops PSG back down to 5th, a HUGE 14 points behind the league leaders Juventus with just 10 games left to play.
This defeat marks PSG’s 6th defeat this season, already more than the whole of the previous campaign and the one prior to that with another 10 games left to play.
We attempted to get a quote and reaction from PSG manager Simon Clarke as he left the stadium, however he declined to fulfill his media obligations and was seen travelling back to France completely separate to the PSG squad & coaching staff.
We DID however gain comment from Juventus manager Andy Banks after the game, here’s what he had to say on the victory:
“Any time you beat a team like PSG it’s a huge deal. I remember 15 years ago when managing a newly promoted WBA team in the Premier League. We beat the then juggernaut Chelsea team and it felt like we’d won the league!
This is slightly different for myself as I’ve now actually won the league several times…in a row. 5 to be exact but whose counting?
Anyway, it’s still a huge deal as PSG have the best squad in the world and a very capable manager. This season they’ve struggled in the league but I’m sure they’ll be back next time around.
As for the game, we had a very clear vision of how the game needed to go if we were to gain all 3 points and that was to sit back and frustrate PSG, knowing they’d come at us with everything either from the start or after a certain portion of the game had elapsed and we knew that when we got our chances, we had to be clinical and take them and E_Smith_Rowe showed today why he’s a world class player and perhaps why PSG shouldn’t have ever let him leave.
I know that the tactics that we used, ‘parking the bus’ when 1-0 up, will come in for some criticism but in these kinds of games and in the stage of the season that we’re in you need to do whatever it takes to claim the 3 points and I won’t apologise for that.
We can’t become complacent now and think that because we’ve beaten PSG both home & away that every game will be easy because it won’t. Our next game is just as important as this one and the one before that so we’ll just look ahead to Monday’s fixture and try to win that one and way we can.
If a great performance comes along with it then brilliant but if a poor performance comes with a fortunate victory then that will please myself, the players & I’m sure the fans just as much.”
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