Soccer Football – Serie A – Cagliari v Juventus – Sardegna Arena, Cagliari, Italy – July 29, 2020 Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo looks dejected, as play resumes behind closed doors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) REUTERS/Alberto Lingria
CAGLIARI, Italy (Reuters) – Cristiano Ronaldo’s hopes of finishing the season as top scorer in Italy’s Serie A faded away on Wednesday as he failed to find the net when champions Juventus slumped to a shock 2-0 defeat away to Cagliari.
The 35-year-old Portuguese attacker is on 31 goals for the season, four behind Lazio’s Ciro Immobile with only a home league game against fifth-p
Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo in action, as play resumes behind closed doors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) REUTERS/Alberto Lingria
CAGLIARI, Italy (Reuters) – Cristiano Ronaldo’s hopes of finishing the season as top scorer in Italy’s Serie A faded away on Wednesday as he failed to find the net when champions Juventus slumped to a shock 2-0 defeat away to Cagliari.
The 35-year-old Portuguese attacker is on 31 goals for the season, four behind Lazio’s Ciro Immobile with only a home league
Soccer Football – Serie A – Cagliari v Juventus – Sardegna Arena, Cagliari, Italy – July 29, 2020 Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo in action, as play resumes behind closed doors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) REUTERS/Alberto Lingria
CAGLIARI, Italy (Reuters) – Cristiano Ronaldo’s hopes of finishing the season as top scorer in Italy’s Serie A faded away on Wednesday as he failed to find the net when champions Juventus slumped to a shock 2-0 defeat away to Cagliari.
The 35-year-old Portuguese attacker is on 31 goals for the season, four behind Lazio’s Ciro Immobile with only a home league game against fifth-pla
TURIN, Italy (Reuters) – Juventus won Serie A for the ninth season in a row when Cristiano Ronaldo set them on the way to a 2-0 win over Sampdoria on Sunday although the Portuguese veteran missed a late penalty.
Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates scoring their first goal with teammates, as play resumes behind closed doors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). REUTERS/Massimo Pinca
The 35-year-old broke the deadlock in first-half stoppage time with his 31st league goal of the season and Federico Bernardeschi added the second as Juve moved seven points clear of Inter Milan.
Juve, in their first season under coach Maurizio Sarri, clinched the title with two games to spare despite a stuttering run in which they won only one out of five matches before Sunday.
Serie A: Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo, second left, celebrates after scoring his team’s first goal during the Serie A football match between Juventus and Sampdoria at the Allianz stadium in Turin, Italy, Sunday, July 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Before the break for the coronaviruspandemic. After the lockdown. And now for nine years running.
Juventus is the undisputed leader of Italian football.
Cristiano Ronaldo scored the go-ahead goal and Juventus beat Sampdoria 2-0 Sunday to secure the Turin club’s record-extending ninth straight Serie A title.
At the final whistle, Juventus players danced in celebration and embraced each other before the empty stands inside the Allianz Stadium.
It was Juventus’ first title under coach Maurizio Sarri, who brought in a completely new system.
“It was the most beautiful title, because it was the most difficult,” said defender Leonardo Bonucci, who has been wearing the captain’s armband with Giorgio Chiellini injured. “We started a new era, a new philosophy, ran into so many difficulties, but we continued to give our all throughout, even when there were so many slip-ups.
“It was so complicated beyond the field, too; the world changed in three months. It was difficult to get our heads back into it after three months. We suffered.”
Bonucci dedicated the title to Juventus fans who were victims of the coronavirus.
“It’s for those who left us and cheered for us from up above,” Bonucci said. “It’s been an intense year. But we stayed together as a team.”
For his 31st goal in 32 matches, Ronaldo completed a set piece when Miralem Pjanić rolled across a free kick for the five-time Ballon
The 2019-20 Premier League season came to a thrilling conclusion this weekend and Serie A saw Juventus crowned champions for a ninth consecutive season. It’s Monday, so Gab Marcotti reacts to the weekend’s biggest moments.
Ronaldo delivers Serie A for Juventus, but what’s next for Sarri & Co.?
If football were more like other sports, evaluating Juventus’ decision to commit some €318 million (around $370m) in wages and transfer fees over four seasons to Cristiano Ronaldo would be more straightforward. You figure out to what degree the team has improved, you look at his production, you count the silverware, you factor in any increased revenue and you weigh that against what that cash might have bought you if you’d chosen to spend it differently. Chuck in some fuzzy variables like brand image and prestige, and you’re done. You might not reach a definitive, indisputable answer, but at least you have something to work with.
But this sport — and its economics — don’t quite work that way. The “fuzzy” intangible stuff takes on outsized importance because we live it by moments, and Ronaldo showed late in the first half of Sunday’s title-sealing 2-1 win over Sampdoria just what he brings to the table.
It was late in the first half and the old fox Claudio Ranieri had set his Samp side up to frustrate Juve. They had avoided relegation and had nothing to play for but pride, yet were finishing the season on a high with five wins in seven games. Juve, on the other hand, were hobbling to the finish line with one victory in five and, just as worryingly, a string of sub-par performances. They lost Danilo through injury and then, more importantly, Paulo Dybala, the guy who had been carrying them since the restart. And it was still 0-0…
What did Cristiano do? First, in an effort to catch the opposition off guard and transmit urgency to his teammates — some of whom played as if they were paralyzed by fear of failure — he took a quick throw-in from behind the advertising hoarding, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Then, deep in first-half injury time, he’s on hand to finish Miralem Pjanic‘s set-piece routine. He does it by creating space, deceiving Samp’s defenders into thinking he’ll run toward the goal and then bouncing back out, receiving the square pass and stabbing it home with power and accuracy.
It’s one goal of many that may well be lost, but it sums up the intangible view he brings. How you assess it, and what portion of $370m over four years it adds up to, is a matter of personal choice.
Beyond that, I stand by what I wrote 10 days ago. This is not a well-assembled team for what Maurizio Sarri needs to succeed, which goes some way to explaining why there has been so little progress in these 12 months.
Still, let’s not lose sight of the macro-story or take away from Sarri, writ large. This is a guy who never played professionally and was pushing papers in a bank well into his 40s. And now, at 61, he has become the oldest manager to win the Serie A title. He was also instrumental in restoring Dybala, arguably Juve’s best player since the restart, to the level he was at a few years back. And he retains that self-deprecating sense of humor, telling his players: “If you won with me as coach, you must be really, really good!”
It’s funny, but it also underscores the reality and the dilemma Juve’s top brass face going into the Champions League. Yes, they win because they have much better and better-paid and more expensive players than everybody else. So what does Sarri bring? Would they be better off with someone else? And can he make his mark on this team?
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The FC crew react to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer delivering Champions League football to Man United.
There’s a danger in looking at points totals and league finishes as a measure of a club’s progress. If you want to be negative, you can point out that this is their second-lowest points total in 29 years, after the wretched David Moyes campaign. Or that to find the last time they were this many points away from the top of the table you need to go all the way back to 1974-75, when they weren’t even in the top flight. (OK, under the
Juventus players celebrate after clinching the title
Cristiano Ronaldo dedicated Juventus’ record-extending ninth successive Serie A title ‘to the fans’ as they defeated Sampdoria in Turin.
The forward scored his 31st league goal of the season from Miralem Pjanic’s short free-kick and Federico Bernardeschi sealed the victory.
Maurizio Sarri’s side are the only team to win nine consecutive titles in one of Europe’s top five leagues.
It extends their own record, which Bayern Munich had matched in June.
Ronaldo missed the chance to get closer to Ciro Immobile’s tally of 34 at the top of the Serie A goal charts as he struck a penalty against the crossbar in the final minutes.
Juventus had missed the chance to claim the title in what manager Sarri described as a “messy” defeat at Udinese on Thursday and began Sunday’s match with just one win in their last five games.
They were far from their free-flowing best and were forced to withstand plenty of pressure in the second half but Bernardeschi’s goal from Ronaldo’s saved attempt en
July 26 (Reuters) – Maurizio Sarri was hired by Juventus to impose his renowned high-tempo passing game on the team but the new coach stumbled across a small problem — everything revolves around Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the end, it was the individual brilliance of players such as Ronaldo and playmaker Paulo Dybala, rather than the manager’s tactics, which brought Juve their ninth successive Serie A crown and Sarri his first major title in Italian football.
Ronaldo has so far scored 31 goals in Serie A this season and his previously uneasy partnership with Dybala, who the club tried to sell before the start of the season, has flourished to the extent that the pair are now dubbed “Dybaldo” by the Italian media.
Juventus had won their previous five titles under the pragmatic leadership of Massimiliano Allegri but the club wanted something more flamboyant and hired Sarri to provide it.
TURIN, Italy (Reuters) – Juventus won Serie A for the ninth season in a row when Cristiano Ronaldo set them on the way to a 2-0 win over Sampdoria on Sunday although the Portuguese veteran missed a late penalty.
Soccer Football – Serie A – Juventus v Sampdoria – Allianz Stadium, Turin, Italy – July 26, 2020 Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates scoring their first goal, as play resumes behind closed doors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) REUTERS/Massimo Pinca
The 35-year-old broke the deadlock in first-half stoppage time with his 31st league goal of the season and Federico Bernardeschi added the second as Juve moved seven points clear of Inter Milan.
Juve, in their first season under coach Maurizio Sarri, clinched the title with two games to spare despite a stuttering run in which they won only one out of five matches before Sunday.
Sarri, who claimed the first major Italian title of his career
Serie A: Juventus’ Cristiano Ronaldo, second left, celebrates after scoring his team’s first goal during the Serie A football match between Juventus and Sampdoria at the Allianz stadium in Turin, Italy, Sunday, July 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
