Juventus player ratings vs Genoa: Juve gifted 3 points by Genoa
By John Vaccaro
Juventus should be mailing Genoa a thank-you card on Thursday.
Juve didn’t deserve to win Wednesday’s match, but Genoa did everything in their power to ensure Juve would take 3 points from the match.
It took Juve a while to open the scoring in the match, with everybody besides Paulo Dybala struggling to create any kind of chance. It took 36 minutes for them to find a breakthrough when Rodrigo Bentancur sent in a corner, which was misplayed by Genoa’s keeper, allowing Leonardo Bonucci to head the ball in for a 1-0. Unfortunately, that lead wouldn’t even survive the 9 minutes until halftime.
Just four minutes later, Alex Sandro made an awful pass while Juve was trying to work the ball out of their half, allowing the ball to fall right in the path of Christian Kouame. Kouame quickly fired the ball toward goal, but needed a bit of luck for it to find the back of the net. He accidentally shot it off of his other leg, causing it to redirect into Juve’s goal after Gianluigi Buffon dove the other way. This sent the match to halftime tied at 1.
The second half was even more of a struggle, in spite of Genoa’s best efforts to lose. In the 51st minute, Francesco Cassata foolishly committed grabbed a hold of Dybala’s jersey twice while already on a yellow card, earning himself a second yellow and a sending off. Still, Juventus struggled to capitalize on their advantage. They even gave up the advantage when Adrien Rabiot got a second yellow of his own in the 87th minute.
It would take a needless foul from Genoa in the box to give Juve the chance they needed. Ronaldo was nowhere near goal and wasn’t in a position of any danger, but drew a pointless foul from Genoa. He easily converted the penalty, burying it in the corner to give Juve the 2-1 lead and the win.
GK: Gianluigi Buffon 6.5/10
As is usually the case with Juve’s keepers, there wasn’t really much to this match for Gianluigi Buffon. He was only called into action 3 times and one of those was Genoa’s incredibly fluky goal. It’s impossible to blame Buffon for not being able to anticipate that wild deflection. He did make a couple of nice saves and distributed the ball well from the back, but this was overall another pretty slow day for Buffon.