Goals from Juan Cuadrado and Federico Bernardeschi were enough to give Juventus a 2-0 victory over Olympiacos in their final Champions League Group D match, thus ensuring qualification to the knockout stage.
Olympiacos have now lost six of their eight meetings against Juventus, who finished second in the group to Barcelona.
An early Cuadrado strike gave the Bianconeri some breathing room, and despite a match which offered little in the way of goalmouth action, substitute Bernardeschi rifled home the second just before the end.
Needing a win to guarantee progression, Juventus went at their opponents from the off and scored with their first real attempt on goal.
Alex Sandro got on the end of a long raking ball from Blaise Matuidi, then crossed for Cuadrado to tap in from close range.
It could have been two soon after though Cuadrado was denied by an alert Silvio Proto. Gonzalo Higuain had a shot deflected wide, after Mehdi Benatia had put a header off target.
Then just before the half time whistle, Wojciech Szczesny pulled off a great reaction stop to deny Uros Djurdjevic’s header from hitting the back of the net.
After the break, Panagiotis Tachtsidis played Marko Marin through on goal, but Szczesny was alert and got out to meet the German, before collecting the follow up cross.
On hearing Barcelona had scored against Sporting, Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri took off Paulo Dybala right away, as his side relaxed knowing passage into the next round was safe.
Chances for both sides were few and far between as the second period wore on, though El Fardou Ben Nabouhane hit the crossbar after throwing himself at a Leonardo Koutris cross.
Bernardeschi forced a good save from Proto with a stinging strike from distance as the game petered out.
The ex-Fiorentina man did get on the scoresheet in the final minute, driving the ball into the far left bottom corner to make sure of the result.
MATCH FACTS
- Juventus have reached the Champions League knockout stages in each of their last four appearances in the competition.
- Juventus have kept a clean sheet in four consecutive games (all. comp) for the first time since April.
- Juventus have lost only one of their last nine Champions League away games, winning six in the process.
- Juventus have scored six of their seven goals in Champions League this season from open play.
- Cuadrado has scored Juventus’ fastest goal in Champions League this season (15’).
- There were 44 minutes between the last Juventus’ shot in the first half (37’) and their first shot in the second one (81’).
- Juventus fired four shots (one goal) in the last 10 minutes of the game after having failed to attempt a single shot in the first 35 minutes of the second half.
- Today Andrea Barzagli made his 250th appearance with Juventus in all competitions.
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