Mission accomplished

By: Rolf | February 15th, 2009

Niiiice.

I can only begin to imagine the Juve offside’s desperation after this match.
Four times the bianconeri rattled the Doria posts, and yet they were left with only a single goal and point. Sampdoria got excactly the same, minus three woodwork hits.
Juve ran the game from start end with Sampdoria creating a grand total of 3 or maybe 4 chances, and it required a great deal of luck to keep Juve at 1-0 and 1-1 as long as we did.
So how the hell is this “mission accomplished”?

Today would have been mission accompished even if Juve had won 3-1. Not because Pazzini scored a goal with a finish so cool it bordered on annoying or because Cassano embarrased Legrottaglie with one of the most delicious sombreros (chips) witnessed in recent times (this duo is destined for greatness. Well, so was Totti and Cassano but this is different. Really).
This is mission accomplished because we fought for every bit of luck that came our way today.
We scored an early goal and held on to it, which is perfectly reasonable playing away to Juventus. Stankevicius, Raggi, Gastaldello and Padalino fought like lions to keep the Zebra attacks at bay for most of the game (Gastaldello payed for it with a sprained knee), and Sammarco, Franceschini, Pieri and Palomba (yay!) did their bit by throwing themselves in the way ofanything black and white moving towards Castellazzi.
Speaking of Castellazzi, he was in superb form today. He made a very good save on a Nedved rocket early in the game and made some other solid saves. Chanceless at the Amauri header.
Cassano and Pazzini did excactly what they were meant to do, Cassano suffered a muscular injury but it didn’t look too bad. After Cassano’s substitution Pazzini was pretty much the entire Doria attack but he created some problems for the Juve attack that could easily have led to some real chances.

So we had a lot of luck, but we did a fair amount of fighting for it and can now leave Turin with a unexpected point and prepare for wednesday’s UEFA Cup match vs Metalist Standard.

Match facts:

Juventus 1 – 1 Sampdoria
Pazzini 10 (S), Amauri 62 (J)
Stadio Olimpico

Juventus: Buffon; Grygera, Mellberg, Legrottaglie, Molinaro; Camoranesi (Marchionni 68), Poulsen (Giovinco 46), Tiago (Marchisio 89), Nedved; Amauri, Del Piero

Sampdoria: Castellazzi; Stankevicius, Gastaldello (Ferri 71), Raggi (Da Costa 58); Padalino, Sammarco, Palombo, Franceschini, Pieri; Pazzini, Cassano (Ziegler 76)

Player ratings:

The entire team gets a 7 except for Castellazzi and Pazzini who gets 8.5.

So, until next time, forza Il Bucerchiati!

PS. I’ll be gone from tomorrow ’till Friday, so you’ll have to do without any Samp offside updates for nearly a week. Try not crying your eyes out will you?