DBasia.news – Juventus successfully embraced the Italian Super Cup after beating Napoli 2-0. The two winning goals for the Italian League giants were scored by Cristiano Ronaldo and Alvaro Morata.
In the match that took place at Mapei Stadium, Thursday (21/1), the two teams fought fiercely for most of the match. Juventus and Napoli both played openly to win.
Juventus and Napoli immediately played openly from the start. It made the match interesting.
Juventus first threatened Napoli’s goal through Artur’s action in the ninth minute. Unfortunately, the shot was still up even though he had enough free space.
Napoli tried to launch a response in the 21st minute. But Lorenzo Insigne’s free kick execution was still able to be anticipated by Wojciech Szczesny.
Seven minutes later, Napoli continued to threaten Juventus’ goal. This time, Andrea Petagna’s header was also able to be anticipated by Szczesny.
In the remainder of the first half, several attempts by the two teams still failed to produce goals. The 0-0 score lasted until halftime.
After the break, Juventus immediately took the initiative to play. Andrea Pirlo’s team attacked Napoli’s defense.
This caused panic in Napoli’s defense. A number of mistakes were finally made by Kalidou Koulibaly and his team mates, which made one of them able to be used by Cristiano Ronaldo to score a goal in the 64th minute.
The goal had a special meaning for CR7. He is now officially the top scorer of all time with a collection of 760 goals.
After conceding, Napoli tried to get out of the pressure to find a goal back. But they had difficulty developing the game.
Napoli finally received a golden opportunity to score when the referee awarded a penalty in the 78th minute through the help of VAR. Dries Mertens, who appeared as a substitute, was violated by Weston McKennie in the forbidden box.
Ironically, Lorenzo Insigne failed to take advantage of this golden opportunity, who ran as executor. His shot went wide to the left of Juventus’ goal.
In the remaining time, Napoli continued to try to score a goal back. It left a lot of openings in their defense.
Alvaro Morata was finally able to take advantage of this to keep Juventus away. The Spanish striker scored in injury time which also ended Napoli’s resistance.
Juventus were finally able to defend their victory until the game was over. The Old Lady won their ninth Italian Super Cup title in history.
This is Juventus’ first trophy under Pirlo’s tutelage. This success certainly adds to their confidence to fight for the Scudetto for the rest of this season.
Line-up of players:
Juventus (4-4-2): Wojciech Szczesny; Juan Cuadrado, Giorgio Chiellini, Leonardo Bonucci, Danilo; Weston McKennie, Rodrigo Bentancur (Adrien Rabiot 84 ‘), Federico Chiesa (Federico Bernardeschi 46’), Arthur; Cristiano Ronaldo, Dejan Kulusevski (Alvaro Morata 84 ‘).
Coach: Andrea Pirlo.
Naples (4-3-2-1): David Ospina; Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Kostas Manolas, Kalidou Koulibaly, Mario Rui (Matteo Politano 85 ‘); Diego Demme (Fernando Llorente 85 ‘), Tiemoue Bakayoko (Eljif Elmas 67’); Hirving Lozano, Piotr Zielinski. Lorenzo Insigne; Andrea Petagna (Dries Mertens 72 ‘).
Coach: Gennaro Gattuso.