Champions League: Resilient Juventus outclassed Monaco despite their thriving strike force

With Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick on Tuesday, the Champions League had in effect been reduced to just three genuine contenders for glory in Wales in the late spring, but after Juventus’s 2-0 comprehensive demolition of Monaco last night, the route to the final seems all but sealed to Leonardo Jardim’s team. Cardiff is predestined to host Real Madrid and Juventus in the European Cup final. Against Monaco, Juventus triumphed, not so much in achieving an outstanding first-leg result, but in the manner of their accomplishment.

Sensational Juventus, playing football the other way

In a world of resplendent attacking football - think CR7’s fatuous hat-trick and Barcelona’s simmering South American trident – Juventus provide a beautiful antidote, a brilliant “alternative fact” to Guardiola’s singular truth, a varied explanation of how football ought to be played – there is another way after all and, quite frankly, it’s as beautiful and as beguiling as the, at times, self-righteous forward propensity of other spangled clubs.

Everything about Juventus was extraordinary against Monaco. Gianluca Buffon, Andrea Barzagli, Giorgo Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci were immovable. They were but the stars in a perfect cosmos. They again formed a Pretorian Guard. Juventus had “Gandalf-ed” – you shall not pass – Barcelona in the quarter-finals, but, perhaps eclipsed that performance at the Cote D’Azur with a sleek 90 minutes against the team from the principality.

If they were tentative at first, Juventus soon imposed their game. Juventus’s defence squashed the footballing talent of both Kylian Mbappe, the new heir to Thierry Henry, and Radamel Falcao, the rejuvenated Colombian. Even in the 90th minute, as Joao Moutinho delivered a sweeping cross, met by a thumping header from Valere Germain, Buffon ensured, with his fingertips, that the Italian back line remained intact.

This was a delightful version of Catenaccio – defenders who still knew how to defend and who elevated that trait to a fine art. But Massimo Allegri’s team were not vulgar in wanting to protect their own goalkeeper and confine their activities to that sole purpose. No, they offered more, their identity was not about defending alone. They were imperious in going forward, embodied by the evergreen Daniel Alves, who, once marginalised at a great Catalan institution, was flawless in his defending, but also gargantuan and rampant in his attacking.

The Brazilian delivered two brilliant assists, first an intuitive back heel, that was both audacious and defense-splitting, and then a floated cross. He had beaten Barcelona, now he was beating the much heralded Monegasks. Perhaps Real Madrid next in the final?

Cardiff looms large for Juventus, and Real Madrid 

Picture CR7 in his lavish mansion – still reminiscing about his feat against city rivals Atletico Madrid, still delighting in his own extraordinary craftsmanship and supreme athleticism, at a loss to find the exact superlatives – watching Juventus and pondering, if not with all his self-confidence, but at least with some anxiety – how on earth would he go on and score against the Italians in the final?

Today CR7 merely needs to touch the ball to score, he is after all the gravity center of the footballing universe, but Juventus propose a very different and daunting 90 minutes in Cardiff on June 3. That is, if the club from Turin do reach the showpiece event of the European season, yet, at this stage, there seems little doubt that they will.

And so, the semi-finals of the Champions League have become weirdly frigid after 180 minutes. These two matches were supposed to proffer grand and galactic football, aligned with the exhilarating football of the two previous knockout stages, with more remontadas (comebacks), with more Bayern-exits and more Mbappe magic – they did to some extent, but where was the competitiveness? Where had the brimming and galvanising young Monaco team gone? Had Atletico Madrid’s warrior spirit simply vanished? Bar a miracle, Real Madrid or Juventus will be crowned Champions League winners in June.

Blunt Monaco

Perhaps, Monaco and bluntness are not compatible, or at least that was the perception before the last four in the European Cup entered the field, but Juventus schooled Jardim’s boys, who, with praised heaped on them from all corners of the globe, are on their way to the riches of the English Premier League.

But for all of the greatness of Mbappe, Thomas Lemar, Bernado Silva, Tiemoue Bagayoko and others, this Monaco XI were made to look very ordinary by Juventus. The hosts looked perplexed and ragged, with the visitors simply more fluent and solid. Perhaps Bagayako’s warrior-like mask was a metaphor for the match – it looked frightening, but did little to protect its bearer in the game. Indeed, Bagayoko roamed around with his intimidating presence and didn’t shirk his duties, but ultimately he couldn’t regain control of the game - and so for Jardim and Monaco it is back to drawing board in an attempt to overcome one of life’s great forces, Allegri’s Juventus.