Zenit v Juventus match review

By: j | September 18th, 2008

While the scoreline was decided by Alessandro Del Piero’s superb goal at the seventy-fifth minute in-truth the match should be remembered for the superb tactical midfield play, near-perfect marking and a committed decision by every player on the pitch to generate opportunities in moving without the ball. Juventus classically controlled the Zenit attack through its defensive approach.

Zenit started the match fast, with Danni pushing a point-blank shot just wide of the Juventus goal. From there, Juve seemed to wake-up, created a number of opportunities that were just slightly off the mark including a superb cross by Alessandro Del Piero to David Trézéguet roughly five minutes later. Another ten minutes later, Alessandro’s free kick from twenty meters was flicked off the post by Mauro Camoranesi. The match slowly became more of a box-to-box affair after those opportunities and came to a nil draw at the half.

Zenit Saint Petersburg came fast out of the gate in the second half but it was Gigi Buffon, as he has so often done is his legendary career, robbing Radek Šírl of a goal in-close after being threaded a pass by Andrei Arshavin. With the match looking like it was going to head to a draw, Alessandro Del Piero painted the deciding stroke, a masterpiece free kick from twenty-seven meters into the back of the net. Zenit pushed forward to level the match with both Igor Denisov and Andrei Arshavin coming agonizing close but it was not to be.

This was a tough match for Zenit not to come out without a point however Dick Advocaat will need to mobilize his forces quickly as they face CSKA Moscow in a titanic battle this Sunday and then return to Champions League against Real Madrid next Wednesday.

Zenit Saint Petersburg
Vyacheslav Malafeev
Ivica Križanac, Sébastien Puygrenier,Alexander Anyukov,
Anatoliy Tymoschuk, Igor Denisov, Radek Šírl,Konstantin Zyryanov (Alejandro Dominguez 80′)
Andrei Arshavin, Danni, Pavel Pogrebnyak

Juventus
Gigi Buffon, Nicola Legrottaglie, Christian Molinaro (Paolo De Ceglie 57′), Zdenek Grygera, Giorgio Chiellini, Mohamed Sissoko, Christian Poulsen, Mauro Camoranesi (Hasan Salihamidzic 32′), Pavel Nedved, David Trézéguet (Carvalho De Oliveira Amauri 87′),Alessandro Del Piero