Lady Luck abandons Juventus in UCL draw vs. Sporting

When I was a freshman in high school, my homeroom teacher’s name was Mr. Bobo.

No, I’m dead serious, that’s actually his surname.

Mr. Bobo was — well, is, the man’s still very much alive — a man of few words, who often watched the world in front of him with an attitude that could best be described as, “I can’t believe this shit.” Often, when witnessing a minor calamity (one’s pen exploding mid-class, or one’s shoelace breaking as you tried to tie it, or leaving something relatively important at home) befall a student he would stoically observe the situation before grunting a single word: “Unlucky.”

The way he intoned that word came barreling out of my memory as Juventus’ Champions League league phase tie with Sporting drew to a close. Juventus had played very, very well. They’d outshot their opponents 18-4, and half of those 18 shots were on target. Of Sporting’s shots, only two came after the first 15 minutes of the contest, and only one found the target. Unfortunately, that one — Sporting’s first of the game — happened to go into the net after ricocheting off the post. Unlucky.

Juve, meanwhile, were constantly seeing shots or crosses from good positions blocked at the last second, or, in multiple cases, watched Rui Silva become the latest goalkeeper to tap into his inner Gigi Buffon when playing against Juventus. The Portuguese stopper made several reaction saves to point-blank headers, as well as one or two more relatively improbable saves that kept Juve at bay for most of the match. Unlucky.

So it went at the J Stadium on Tuesday evening, as Juventus played one of their better games of the season, but could only come away with a 1-1 draw, leaving them with only three points halfway through the league phase — the worst Champions League start in team history. Unlucky.

Luciano Spalletti’s home debut saw him continue to employ the experiment that he’d made against Cremonese on Saturday. Bremer, Lloyd Kelly, Juan Cabal, Carlo Pinsoglio, and Arkadiusz Milik were unavailable, but Kenan Yildiz returned after missing the game in Cremona over the weekend to rest a sore knee. Again Spalletti turned to the 3-4-2-1 formation. Michele Di Gregorio anchored the team behind the defensive line of Pierre Kalulu, Federico Gatti, and Teun Koopmeiners. Andrea Cambiaso moved back to the left wing-back position, joined on the right by Weston McKennie. Manuel Locatelli and Khéphren Thuram formed the double pivot, while Yildiz and Francisco Conceição supported Dusan Vlahovic in the attacking phase.

Sporting manager Rui Borges had come in on a great run of form. They’d lost only three games all year — one to Benfica in the Portuguese Super Cup, one to Porto in league play, and one to Napoli on the first day of October, which was their last loss heading into the night. Borges was missing Nuno Santos, Daniel Bragança, and Ivan Fresneda to injury, but had plenty in his arsenal to fill in his 4-2-3-1. Silva started in goal, screened by Georgios Vagiannidis, Gonçalo Inácio, Ousmane Diomande, and Maxi Araújo. Morten Hjulmund, who had been heavily connected with a move to Juve in the summer, joined João Simões in the double pivot, while up front the line of Geovany Quenda, Trincão, and Pote supported Fotis Ioannidis in attack.

The game’s opening phases were cagey in the extreme, with both teams trading bits of possession as they tried to suss out where each other’s weaknesses were. Juve had the first sight at goal in the ninth minute when McKennie lofted a ball toward Vlahovic at the back post. The striker was alone in the box to line it up, but the delivery had forced him wide and flattened his angle, giving him only one shooting angle for his volley at the near post, which Silva had to parry into the air before he could collect it.

It was an encouraging start, but Sporting wiped any good feelings off their feet only three minutes later when they opened the scoring out of nowhere.

A series of quick passes moved the ball up the right side of the field and then across it, including a nifty back-heel flick by Ioannidis to Trincão, who spread the ball further wide to Araújo. McKennie didn’t close the left-back down, and he unleashed a powerful shot across goal that slammed into the side of the back post so hard it sounded as if it it had cracked it, before ricocheting into the net to give Sporting the lead.

AFP via Getty Images

When Sporting pierced the middle of Juve’s defense and Trincão slammed a shot off the bottom of the crossbar two minutes later, it looked like a calamity might be brewing. But three minutes after that Juve turned the momentum of the game around. Kalulu lofted a beautiful cross into the box that was met perfectly by Vlahovic, who sent a powerful header along toward the far post. Nine times out of 10 a header like that ends up in the goal, but somehow, Silva stuck out a hand and managed to push it to the side. It was an astounding save, and it clearly fired up Vlahovic, who fired another shot 30 seconds later from 22 yards out that skipped along the grass and forced Silva into another one-handed parry.

The close calls seemed to have revved the entire team up, and the flow of the match began to shift hard toward Juventus. The attack tended to move well, but often ran into a single unfortunate touch that broke things up. It also didn’t help that German referee Daniel Siebert refused to call a few very obvious fouls that would’ve given Juve some dead-ball opportunities.

The pressure finally paid in the 34th minute, when Yildiz held the ball up with a man on his back and laid it off to Thuram, who charged forward and put the ball across for Vlahovic. Juve’s No. 9 finally beat Silva with a quick tap that sped past the Portuguese keeper to tie the score.

Anadolu via Getty Images

Six minutes later, Yildiz set up Conceição for what would’ve been a carbon copy of Vlahovic’s goal, but Inácio got the barest of touches to redirect his shot beyond the post.

The first five minutes of the second half saw more of the same for Sporting’s defense. A ball into the box by Yildiz narrowly missed Vlahovic, but was going to bounce into the path of Conceição, only for his marker to scramble it behind. Vlahovic and Thuram both hit long shots right at Silva. Just after the hour mark McKennie headed a ball back across the box that just barely missed Vlahovic high, and Cambiaso’s followup shot was blocked by the crowd in the box.

Sporting got a little bit of a handle back on the flow of the match as the second half wore on, but never in a way that felt truly dangerous. Juve, meanwhile, continued to look menacing every time they moved on the attack. As the clock ticked on the game got more and more open. Sporting’s only really dangerous attempt came with five minutes late when Luis Suárez (not that one) pulled one wide from 19 yards.

Juve had two last big attempts in stoppage time, when Kalulu once again sent a fantastic ball into the box. This time it was Jonathan David on the back end. He ran onto it well, but his header for the roof of the net didn’t have quite enough power to get past Silva, who tipped it over the bar. With seconds remaining Filip Kostic snapped off a shot on a loose ball that took a nasty deflection that very nearly took it into the goal but instead flew just high.

Siebert soon blew the final whistle, leaving Juve wondering what could’ve been if one or two things had gone just a little bit differently.