Juventus player ratings vs Torino: Simone Zaza gives Juve an early Christmas gift

When you’re one of the world’s best teams, every team that you play against is going to give you their best shot and that means you need to be at your best as well.

This is especially true in derbies, but Juventus didn’t show up for this derby looking anywhere near their best. Luckily for them a former member of their team gift wrapped a goal for them.

Juventus looked sluggish throughout the first half. They didn’t pass accurately and didn’t look like they had any kind of strategy to break through Torino’s defense. Even the defense looked to be at less than its best in the first half. In fact, it was Torino who created the most dangerous chance of the first half when a free kick was delivered to the far post and headed toward goal by Andrea Belloti. Mattia Perin snuffed out that chance to keep thing level going into halftime.

Juve tightened up their passing in the second half and took control of possession, but they once again struggled to break through the Torino defense. It was starting to look like the match was destined to be a goalless draw, but Simone Zaza intervened. Zaza won the ball in his own half and continued to run toward his own goal with Leonardo Bonucci pursuing him. The pressure caused him to make an ill-advised pass back to his keeper, which was intercepted by Mario Mandzukic. Torino’s backup keeper Salvador Ichazo then took Mandzukic down and Juve was awarded a penalty. Cristiano Ronaldo stepped up to the spot and delivered a decent penalty that Ichazo got a piece of, but was unable to keep it out.

Juve had another goal shortly after when Miralem Pjanic delivered a free kick that Mario Mandzukic got on the end of and rocketed past Ichazo, but Ronaldo was called offside and the goal was disallowed. Torino didn’t provide much attacking threat and Juventus coasted the rest of the way to a 1-0 win in the 198th Derby della Mole.

GK: Mattia Perin 7/10

Mattia Perin got his first start of the month against Torino and turned it into his 3rd consecutive clean sheet with Juventus. The 3 shots on target he faced were his most this season and the Andrea Belotti close range effort was the most dangerous. It won’t be enough for him to overtake Wojciech Szczesny as the starting keeper, but he couldn’t ask for a much better start to his Juventus career than 3 clean sheets in his first 3 starts.