Juventus player ratings vs Atalanta: Juve embarrassed on way out of Coppa Italia
By John Vaccaro
The best way I can think to describe Wednesday’s performance from Juventus is utter disaster.
From the start of the match Atalanta put pressure on Juventus and Juve quickly collapsed under the pressure. The midfield was unable to get anything positive going. The defense was an absolute mess. Yes, losing Giorgio Chiellini made things more difficult for Juve, but they didn’t show anything before his departure that would lead you to believe they would have done much better even with him out there.
Before the match it was clear that Juventus would need to be at their best to slow down an Atalanta attack that was absolutely on fire and starred one of the most in-form strikers in the world, Duvan Zapata. Juventus didn’t look to be even close to their best and Atalanta was at their absolute best, using their high pace, pressuring attack to keep Juve on the back foot from start to finish. That pressure led directly to the opening goal of the match when Joao Cancelo’s giveaway perfectly opened up Timothy Castagne’s goal and when Mattia De Sciglio made an awful back pass that Duvan Zapata intercepted and turned into the third goal of the match.
The loss puts an end to Juve’s dreams of their first ever treble and it also ends a 4 year run of domestic doubles. Now Juventus must go back to the drawing board to protect their lead in Serie A and continue to chase a Champions League trophy.
GK: Wojciech Szczesny 5/10
This was a rough day for Wojciech Szczesny’s season long stats, but there wasn’t really much he could do about it. He managed to save half of the shots he faced and was badly let down by the defense in front of him throughout the match. As bad as the scoreline looked this won’t be the match that costs Szczesny his starting job.