Juventus player ratings vs Young Boys: Juve wins Group H in spite of embarrassing loss
By John Vaccaro
It’s been a long time since Juventus has looked that bad.
Wednesday’s match against Young Boys was nothing short of embarrassing for Juve. Yes, some of it can be blamed on an awful penalty call, but that doesn’t excuse the complete lack of effort shown by Juve in this match.
The issues started early for Juve when Juan Cuadrado was forced to leave the match with an injury in the 22nd minute. His replacement, Alex Sandro, was then called for a ridiculous penalty when he may have actually been the one who was fouled. Young Boys converted the penalty to take a 1-0 lead in the 30th minute. Juve spent the next 37 minutes trying to break the Young Boys defense down to no avail.
The next goal surprisingly came to Young Boys as well. In the 68th minute Guillame Hoarau broke loose on a counterattack and slotted one past Wojciech Szczesny. The 2-0 Young Boys lead seemed insurmountable for Juve, but they would fight back.
It took Juve 13 minutes to get the goal that would once again give them a chance to win the match. In the 80th minute Douglas Costa played a ball in to Ronaldo which he passed out to Paulo Dybala who blasted it into the net from outside the box. This got Juve right back into the game, but their next chance would be squandered.
In stoppage time Dybala hammered another shot into the back of the net, but a completely unnecessary lunge at the ball from Cristiano Ronaldo led to the goal being disallowed. Juve would continue to unsuccessfully push for an equalizer, settling for an embarrassing loss.
GK: Wojciech Szczesny 6.5/10
Wojciech Szczesny was surprisingly called into action more than usual against Young Boys. Thanks to an abysmal call by the referee he was forced to face a penalty, which he managed to get a hand on, but couldn’t quite push it past the post. The next dangerous attempt Szczesny faced was an uncontested Christian Fassnacht header from the center of the box that he did a great job to keep out of the net. The next shot he faced was one that he probably could’ve done better on, but didn’t really have much of a chance to save when Guillame Hoarau broke away from the Juve defense. Overall it wasn’t a great day for Szczesny as he allowed 2 goals in a match for just the 3rd time this season, but it could’ve been worse if it weren’t for his quick reaction on the header.