Juve, Vlahovic between nerves and missed opportunities: no goals at San Siro, the taboo stadium

Protests, warning, only one shot on target and two sensational missed opportunities, the first just before Inter’s goal: for the Serbian the “Meazza” remains taboo, it is the stadium in which he has played the most matches without scoring

Giuseppe Nigro

He arrived at the big match, the challenge thrown down by the second team on the first team’s pitch, in his best form since joining Juventus. But more powerful than form and confidence, for Dusan Vlahovic, was evidently the taboo of San Siro, the stadium in which he played the most matches without managing to score. A series that extends to 8 games out of 8, with Fiorentina first and then in black and white, both against Milan and Inter, always in white at the Scala of football. He had scored four games in a row and scored seven goals in the last six games. If there was a defense that could be expected to stop him, it was understandable that it was Inter’s: the best in the league with only 10 goals conceded in 22 games, and this one against Juve is the 14th in which they have kept the goal undefeated .

NERVOUS

But in addition to how the Nerazzurri stopped him, for Vlahovic the way he stopped himself also mattered. The nerves first. A key that Allegri has always pressed hard as a lever to amplify his technical growth. And instead at San Siro Dusan was the first booked, already after 18 minutes, precisely for protests. Not the first protest, but at least the third or fourth, so blatant as to almost call for a card. An anger that he carried with him for a good part of the evening, vented for example on Weah at the end, and there was a need for Gatti to go and act as peacemaker. Benzina is important for playing with the right energy, but in this case he was clearly complicit in an evening of errors: 13 turnovers, no Juventus player like him, and he was also the Juventus player who committed the most fouls, three.

THE TWO MISSED SHOTS…

There is no doubt that Dusan fought and fought, but it is inevitable to think of his nerves on edge when all the occasions in which he lacked clarity in terms of profit, in terms of technical errors as Allegri would say, flash before his eyes. Totally. Vlahovic closed with a shot off target, the overhead kick almost halfway through the second half, trying to turn the ball that came to him with his back to the goal and sent over the crossbar into an opportunity, and with a shot on goal, thrown more out of frustration and causing danger on a ball from the left outside the area towards the end. But the opportunities for which he, and Juve with him, eats his hands, are actually not there in the statistics, and would have changed the meaning of the evening.

… AND THE TWO MISSED SHOTS

The most enormous one in the half hour, when the game could have turned it the wrong way round, just 5 minutes before the Nerazzurri goal: triggered by a gallop from McKennie and placed in front of the goal, he mishandled control on an occasion that a bird of prey from the area didn’t miss , instead he let Pavard put him back together and bye. Vlahovic remaining on the ground in despair with his hands covering his face is the image of the Juventus evening. And he shouts for revenge, just a little less but he shouts very loudly, even that occasion in the quarter of an hour of the second half in which a poisonous cross from Kostic from the left found him all alone in front of the goal at the far post. Except that Dusan found himself too far forward, just enough to miss a ball that should have only been put into the net by the beaten Sommer. A question of centimeters, of hundredths of a second, of details. Those on whom the nerves are pulled just right help to tame the desire, with clarity.



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