DBasia.news – An exciting duel between two teams of the 2018-19 Serie A title fighters took place at the Stadio San Paolo. Napoli host Juventus in the 26th week of Serie A on Monday (4/3) early morning Western Indonesian Time.
The match between the two teams has been running tight from the start, even the match referee Gianluca Rocchi has had to give the home team goalkeeper Alex Meret a red card after he violated Cristiano Ronaldo in the 25th minute.
The superior number of players made the Bianconeri more freely exploit Carlo Ancelotti’s squad, Juve successfully opened the scoring with Miralem Pjanic’s free-kick three minutes later. In the 39th minute, Emre Can was able to double the lead of his team.
Disastrous for Juve took place in the second half, two minutes into the match, Pjanic made a handball and had to end the game faster because of getting a second yellow card. This was then successfully utilized Napoli to catch up, Jose Callejon scored a reply in the 61st minute. There was no additional goal to make the match ended with a score of 2-1 for the visitor’s victory.
Despite the success of securing three crucial points, the Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri could not hide his disappointment when Miralem Pjanic got a red card. Even the Italian man admitted that he was sorry because he didn’t have time to replace it with another player.
“I ‘fell asleep’ and should have replaced Pjanic with other players after he got a yellow card from the referee. The red card made Juventus lose control,” Allegri said as quoted by Goal.
“Juve made Napoli back in focus to the match and all the spectators at the stadium were convinced that if the hosts would be able to turn things around. Even though the children managed to make some chances, we failed to use it,” he added.
Victory over Napoli is a very crucial thing for the Turin club, besides still being an undefeated team in Serie A, Juve are also increasingly firm on the top and 16 points ahead of I Partenopei.