Juventus will play host to Villarreal this evening in Turin, with a place in the last eight of the Champions League on the table.
The reverse fixture started perfectly for both us and Dusan Vlahovic, who despite only just making his debut in the competition, took under 35 seconds to get his name on the board and put our side ahead with a great finish. The home side did fight their way back to draw the match before full-time, but you would imagine that with home advantage we would now be favourites.
In 2022, the Old Lady have not been beaten inside 90 minutes, with Inter Milan snatching a very late winner in extra time to give us our only loss in the Supercoppa Italiana, while they arrive here on the back of four straight wins in all competitions, despite having endured a tough spell with injuries.
Villarreal come into the match with mixed form, winning two and losing once since their 1-1 draw with Juve three weeks ago, but what could be more telling is that they have lost three of their last five matches when playing away from home as they are this evening.
Some have claimed that the Europa League champions were the better side from the opening leg, and could build on that in the second leg, but the fact is that they were chasing the game after a really early concession, and that meant that they needed to play with more urgency.
With no away-goal rule in play, neither side will need to start with too much urgency, and I feel like this will play into our hands and allow us to control the game and wait for our chances, with Dusan Vlahovic a strong shout to add to his amazing goal tally, while Paulo Dybala coming back in today will also be a huge boost to our chances in attack.
I feel like we will get a comfortable 2-0 lead this evening, and send ourselves into the last eight of the competition, while I hope that there are no fresh injuries also, hopefully giving us a great chance of going deep in this competition.
How do you see today’s clash playing out?
Patrick
