Udinese 0-2 Juventus: Old Lady brush aside abject Zebrette

Date: 14th April 2014 at 10:51pm
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Juventus beat Udinese 2-0 at the Stadio Friuli on Monday night in Serie A.

The Old Lady took an important step towards a third consecutive Scudetto as first-half goals from Sebastian Giovinco and Fernando Llorente helped overcome what was a potentially difficult test against the Zebrette and preserved their eight point advantage over Roma.

Despite an impressive home record in Udine the hosts barely put up a fight against a Juventus side resting Carlos Tevez, Arturo Vidal and Leonardo Bonucci and by allowing them to control possession from the very beginning it was not long before the Old Lady took the lead.

With a deep defensive line striker Giovinco was able to collect the ball from just inside the right of the Udinese box and easily step away from Maurizio Domizzi to curl an impressive left-footed effort around the helpless Simone Scuffet to score.

10 minutes later they doubled their lead, Giovinco forcing Scuffet to concede a corner with a low drive and, despite the quality of that stop, the goalkeeper joined his teammates in some comical defending of the resulting set-piece that eventually allowed Llorente to prod home during a brief goal mouth scramble.

Although the second goal finally seemed to spark the Zebrette into life they created little attacking effort of note and with Juventus now seemingly happy to see the result out the only other incident of note during the opening period was the booking of substitute Leonardo Bonucci that will see him miss their next match against Bologna.

Even with former Udinese man Kwadwo Asamoah admitting that he and his teammates were physically vulnerable through their Europa League efforts the second half improvement by Francesco Guidolin’s team could still not test Juventus as they strolled to victory.

The Old Lady probably should really have increased their, Giovinco showing some neat footwork yards from goal to avoid two Udinese defenders, but shooting as he lost his balance struck the post.

With this arguably their toughest test before meeting the Giallorossi at the Stadio Olimpico in Week 37 Antonio Conte’s men will now be confident of collecting enough points from their matches against Bologna, Sassuolo and Atalanta to head to Rome already as champions.

Follow Kevin Pogorzelski on Twitter: @rabbitrabbiton

 

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