Not many people would have thought that the Serie A title holders Juventus, one of the best teams in the world, would be pushed to the limits by the A-League players in the pre-season game at ANZ Stadium, but, it happened.
A crowd of more than 50,000 which was mostly cheering for Juventus witnessed a thriller of a match yesterday night in Sydney. Had it not been for two goals in a space of 5 minutes towards the end, the Italian giants would have suffered an embarrassing upset.
Not many people would have thought that the Serie A title holders Juventus, one of the best teams in the world, would be pushed to the limits by the A-League players in the pre-season game at ANZ Stadium, but, it happened.
A crowd of more than 50,000 which was mostly cheering for Juventus witnessed a thriller of a match yesterday night in Sydney. Had it not been for two goals in a space of 5 minutes towards the end, the Italian giants would have suffered an embarrassing upset.
It was not that the Juventus boss Allegri was playing with a weaker side. He had, in fact, gone into the match with his strongest players, but, only to see them being outplayed by the opposition in the first half.
When the players returned for the half time break, the score was 1-0 in the favour of A-League All Stars and a lot of thinking was to be done by Juventus.
It was very easy for Allegri to make substitutions. But, he didn’t do that. He realized he was better off backing his first choice players as they were his best bet for bringing Juventus back into the game.
Juventus did bounce back with a goal courtesy Fernando Llorente in the 59th minute, but, they went one down again about 20 minutes later and the danger of defeat started hovering over them.
But, when it comes to keeping nerve, the strong teams are always slightly better than the minors and Juventus showed that.
From nowhere, the Juventus players developed that spark in the last 5 minutes and fired in two goals back-to-back to save themselves from embarrassment.
But, they were made to lose a lot of sweat for that win by the boys from A-League.
Baggies FTW!