THEY HAVE DOMINATED Italian football in recent seasons, racking up a hat-trick of successive league titles, but Juventus haven’t won a Coppa Italia for 20 years.
An Old Lady side featuring great names like Fabrizio Ravenelli and Gianluca Vialli beat Parma over two legs in 1995 but since then, Juve have suffered plenty of heartache in the tournament, losing in three separate finals since.
But, they’ll get another chance to lift the elusive trophy this year after an impressive semi-final second-leg victory over Fiorentina this evening.
Trailing 2-1 from the first game, Juve took the lead in Florence through the unlikely and much-maligned figure of Alessandro Matri before Roberto Pereyra grabbed a second for the Turin club in the 44th-minute.
Leonardo Bonucci made it 3-0 on the hour mark and Juve were happy to see out the rest of the game given their 4-2 aggregate lead.
But, they did finish with 10 men when Alvaro Morata was sent-off with three minutes remaining.
Still, a job very well done by Max Allegri’s side, especially considering they were without their star man Carlos Tevez due to injury and they’ll now head into a Champions League quarter-final clash with Monaco with confidence soaring.
Originally published on 7 April, 21.45
Outstanding buy for Villa.
@john howard: and outstanding loss for Arsenal
Wow
Extended highlights of the game show the atrocious tackles that got put in on Messi. Battled on with bloody ankles in fairness. The man is in some of the best form of his life. Like a fine wine.
Sadly I don’t see them beating Brazil and the Ronaldo sharade will still claim he’s better due to his international record and Euro win which is chronically over exagerrated. Has 40+ goals of his 100 and odd against teams not in the Fifa top 100 nations.
@Brian Timmons: delighted for Messi but why have a go at Ronaldo?
Anybody that understands anything about football can acknowledge that both players are genius’s and both deserve the many plaudits they’ve rightfully earned. It’s charade and not sharade by the way.
@Aidan Prior: I think to be fair, if Messi had played in England, people on this side of the world would recognise how far ahead of everyone he is.
I watch la liga religiously and seen a lot of both Ronaldo and Messi.
Messi by a country mile and that’s no disrespect to CR7.
The Colombians had 6 yellow cards in the game-all six fouls were on you know who. The man was battered last night, nasty looking ankle injury he picked up