There can be no stopping the Grand “Old Lady” of Italian football to the final of the 2016/17 UEFA Champions League final. So we say in Italian, Benvenuto a Cardiff finale, meaning Welcome to Cardiff final.
Gianluigi Buffon and his Juventus team mates are just 90 minutes away from making the final after their 2-0 first leg win over Monaco last week.
It would be great for a legend like Buffon to have another chance to win the one title that has eluded him but that does not mean Monaco do not stand any chance.
It is football and like they say, a goal can be scored in less than a minute but Juventus manager, Massimiliano Allegri stated at his pre-match press conference that his team has to play better than they did last week.
“We have to play even better than we did in Monaco because we made a few mistakes there.
“The result of the first leg does not count for much because there are still 90 minutes between us and Cardiff.”
Meanwhile, Leonardo Jardim believes his team was just not “clinical” enough in the first leg despite having the same number of shots on target as the Serie A champions.
“We have to attack with our minds free of bad thoughts. In the first leg we had the same number of shots on goal as Juve but they were more clinical.
“Obviously they are more mature than we are but fundamentally we lost because we didn’t make the most of our chances.
“Tomorrow (Tuesday) we want to keep our dream alive. Our objective is to reach the final and we’ll have to be at our best.”
It looks like a gargantuan task for the French side because they have to score at least two goals to take the game to extra time against a Juventus side that has conceded just two goals in this season’s Champions League campaign. They have also not lost a European encounter at the Juventus Stadium in four years but if there were no hope, Monaco wouldn’t be looking forward to this match. For in football, the game is not over until the referee blows it over.
Current Form: Juventus [D-W-D-W-D]; Monaco [W-L-W-L-W]
Head to head
03/05/17 UCL Monaco 0 – 2 Juventus
22/04/15 UCL Monaco 0 – 0 Juventus
14/04/15 UCL Juventus 1 – 0 Monaco
Prediction: Juventus 2-0 Monaco
