Juve, best defense in Serie A: the men change, so they are back in the championship fight

Even without Alex Sandro and especially captain Danilo, Allegri continued to find certainties in the rearguard with Bremer, Gatti and Rugani. Now they have gone six games in a row without conceding a goal: this is Max’s recipe for rising to the championship fight

Giuseppe Nigro

Beyond any assessment of merit, the trench is the image of Juventus’ fourth consecutive success, the third 1-0 in a row, this time in Florence. An all-out resistance from the lead that arrived in the tenth minute and from there until the 96th minute, to throw out the water that risked being brought in by a hail of 43 crosses and 25 shots: of these 11 missed the target, but 4 were saved, honor to Szczesny, and 10 rejected, and here honor to the new wall of the three musketeers no longer unheard of now, but quite unexpected, the Gatti-Bremer-Rugani trio.

BEST DEFENSE

With the goal conceded by Inter against Atalanta, Juventus is now also, on equal merit with the Nerazzurri leaders, the least beaten defense in the championship with only 6 goals conceded, but 4 of these came in just one go. The clear data recounts the eight games with a clean sheet out of eleven in the championship, the sixth consecutive clean sheet, the fifth in the last away games and in fact away from home – according to Opta surveys – it is already the eleventh in 2023. Since that backhand with Sassuolo and Juventus never conceded any more goals.

IN AN EMERGENCY

All this after having lost Alex Sandro for a month and a half now, who may not have exactly been the future of the defense but he was the starter in the first two games. And after losing Danilo, the captain, who before getting hurt had never left the field in the first eight championship games, indispensable, yet the last three successes have always come without him. And everyone in photocopy, 1-0. Now they both see the day of their return approaching. The last of the surviving Brazilians, Bremer in an unsurpassed version in Florence, played 984 minutes out of 990 total (plus recovery time) during the season, only briefly on the bench in the last six minutes against Atalanta because he had hurt himself more than other times.

PROTAGONISTS

The new name not from this year but from the end of last season is that of Federico Gatti, reborn for the umpteenth time after the Sassuolo nightmare, when before the however irrelevant duck of 4-2 he hadn’t even been the worst: from then also a goal, a few cards but above all important scalps. The new name of the last few weeks, not absolutely but for the usual use, is that of Daniele Rugani, protagonist of an important header save also in Florence, reliable and on the pitch in five of the last six matches, four as a starter. Now there’s Cagliari but there’s no doubt that we’re looking further ahead, to Inter-Juve at the end of November. And it will be wall to wall.



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