Michael Cox
Juve strike duo
Juventus basically won this game upfront, via the individual quality of the strikers – and the relationship between them. This is arguably something they didn’t do last season, and last summer’s signings of Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente have given another dimension to the side – otherwise, it’s last seasons’s XI.
Not only do Llorente and Tevez offer very different qualities, they consistently combine well. Rarely do you see two strikers with such great understanding of each other’s positioning and movement, and the intricacy of some of their one-touch play is absurdly good. It’s amazing how often a diagonal pass seemingly played into one of them is actually dummied for the other – let’s call it a Yorke-Cole move – and those combinations repeatedly drag defenders out of position, creating space to attack into.
