Juventus Top Performers – Round 1

Juventus’ debut was certainly packed with action as Chievo Verona not only fought very valiantly, but somehow found the target twice. However, a furious comeback in the final stages of the game allowed the Old Lady to get off to a good start. Here are the top performers for each position.

Alex Sandro (1 point): an excellent performance for the Brazilian fullback, who is not always consistent, but when he is on his best day, he is a handful. He combined well with Douglas Costa, but did most of the damage when Cristiano Ronaldo was his partner on the left wing. Nenad Tomovic simply could not keep up with him and he blew past him several times, then delivering tasty passes towards the center of the box. He sent in 10 crosses and created four scoring chance. One of his deep runs led to Mario Mandzukic’s goal, which was then disallowed and, more importantly, he perfectly set up Federico Bernardeschi for the game-winning score.

Sami Khedira (4 points): he did not have a particularly good performance, but the same was true for Miralem Pjanic and Juan Cuadrado, however he scored the first goal of the season with his usual opportunism on a set piece, where he shook free from the defenders and buried after a flick-on by Giorgio Chiellini. He might not be able to fend off Emre Can for long since the former Liverpool had a positive impact off the bench and a two-man midfield does not suit him that much, but in the meantime he confirmed to be a stealthily big part of the offensive plans.

Federico Bernardeschi (4 points): he was inserted right after Chievo went up in the score for Juan Cuadrado and proved to be already in excellent shape, confirming what he had shown in the pre-season. In this occasion, he was more pragmatic than the other wingers, did not waste time with overly complicated plays and quickly uncorked a shot or a cross when he managed to glide past his man. He delivered the corner kick that Leonardo Bonucci and Mattia Bani deflected to beat Stefano Sorrentino and was in perfect position to pounce on an Alex Sandro’s feed for an easy point-blank finish in the stoppage time to gift his team three hard-fought points.

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