Catania v Juve: Agony

By: Martha | January 12th, 2008

SQUEE! An absolutely heroic performance by Catania tonight cruelly turned out to be not quite enough, since they were playing Juve and Juve always score right at the death By the same token, though, Alex Del Piero was fairly heroic himself, and as much as it pains me to type the words, it was probably right that he dragged hims team into a draw.

Playing in front of a practically full ground must have been a shocking experience for the Elefanti after all the trouble trouble and bans over the past 11 months, and they reponded proudly, going right at Juve whenever they could. It was a fantastic match from the start, with Juve threatening more often but both teams playing wide open football, and Catania opened the scoring with a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous goal by Gionatha Spinesi, who met a Giuseppe Mascara cross with the outside of his foot, redirecting it past a frozen Gigi Buffon in the 16th minute. Juve briefly protested that Spinesi had been offside, but he timed his run almost prefectly and it would have been a cruel flag, had it gone up.

The match heated up from that point and, while (usually) not dirty, there were a lot of cards handed out to Catania players, and neither team pulled out of a tackle. (Needless to say, Pavel Nedved spent a lot of time rolling around on the ground.) Gradually, possibly motivated by their frustrating at being unable to capilize on their posession, Juve grew in strength, and won a series of free kicks in increasingly threatening places in the last quarter hour — it really seemed only a matter of time before they were level. Happily for the home side, they made it to halftime with their lead intact, but when the second half started it was more of the same, and Catania were spending more and more time defending, with varying degrees of desperation.*

Apart from a few, periodically slick counters by Catania, the second half was all Juve but, despite all their control and one-touch passing, could never quite get the last ball right. Or, when they did get it right, their strikers inevitably took it off one another’s heads, or had their shots pounded down at the last second by a desperate, defensive lunge. Ciro Polito was busy cleaning up through balls and corners, but he wasn’t forced into any miraculous saves; the attacks tended to peter out before they got to that point. For their part, Catania were awesome to watch. Their defending often succeded more because of passion than oranization, but what was most impressive was their determination, when possible, to play when they got the ball: Until the last 15 minutes or so, they tried to keep posession and built attacks, rather then just booting the ball into the stand and catching their collective breath.

Eventually, though, with Juve playing something like a 1-3-2-4 and Catania scrambling for their lives, the hoofing the ball away started. Juventus were incredibly frustrated with Catania and with one another, and it really was starting to look like the Sicilian side would work a miracle. Until, that is, the last minute came, and the inevitable happened: Del Piero, who absolultely worked his heart out all night, received the ball on the edge of the box, heasistate for a minute before moving forward, and was tackled from behind. Boom, penalty. While it was nothing like a brutal takedown and Catania and their supporters strongly disagreed with the call, Marco Biagianti did go into Del Piero from behind, and it was his rash challenge that was to blame for the situation. (As you’d expected, Del Piero put the PK away, cool as you like.)

There were four minutes of injury time to go and Catania pushed forward ferociously, but neither team created much and it ended 1-1, with Catania surely the more disappointed of the two sides.

*Speaking of desperation, Tiago started and went off at the half. Apparently he had 45 mintues to prove himself and failed; presumably he’s now home, packing his bags.