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Sunday night’s game between Juventus and Roma was a six-pointer in every sense of the word. A win for the Bianconeri would see them pull within one point of the capital club in the race for the fourth and final Champions League place. Lose, and they would fall seven points back with only 11 games left to play — a deficit that might well have been insurmountable.
For most of the game at the Stadio Olimpico, it looked like Juve would indeed be saddled with that deficit. With 25 minutes to go, Roma were up 3-1 and looking like they were greasing the skids for a run-in to the top four. Juve looked physically spent after their epic Champions League clash with Galatasaray on Wednesday, and Roma’s league-best defense were keeping them from making much of a run at their goal. It looked for all the world like a limp to the finish that would effectively end Juve’s season.
And then, that late-game magic popped up again.
With 12 minutes to go in the game Jérémie Boga ripped a loose ball into the net to bring Juve back into the match. Then, halfway through four minutes of stoppage time, Federico Gatti, who had been on the field for all of 3 1/2 minutes, was teed up perfectly when Weston McKennie flicked a free kick into his path (via the thigh of defender Evan Ndicka), and he slammed the ball home to cap an improbable comeback and keep Juve very much in a three-team race for the final Champions League spot.
Luciano Spalletti had to deal with a major absence in Manuel Locatelli, whose booking against Como had put him over the suspension limit. Emil Holm and Dusan Vlahovic were still on the treatment table. Without Locatelli, Spalletti again reverted back to the 3-4-2-1 formation. Mattia Perin started for the second consecutive game amid Michele Di Gregorio’s struggles. Pierre Kalulu, Bremer, and Lloyd Kelly formed the back three. Weston McKennie and Andrea Cambiaso were the wing-backs, bracketing the midfield pair of Teun Koopmeiners and Khéphren Thruam. Francisco Conceição and Kenan Yildiz supported Jonathan David up front.
Gian Piero Gasperini’s men came into the game having allowed multiple goals only twice all season—against Napoli two weeks ago and when Juve beat them 2-1 in December. He was missing some important players, including former Juve starlet Matias Soulé, Artem Dovbyk, Evan Ferguson, and Mario Hermoso. He employed a 3-5-2 as opposed to his usual 3-4-2-1, with Mile Svilar propping up the formation in goal. Gianluca Mancini, Zeki Çelik, and Ndicka screened him in defense. Devyne Rensch and Wesley were the wing-backs, with Nicolò Psilli, Bryan Cristante and Manu Koné in midfield. Lorenzo Pellegrini played alongside Donyell Malen at the top of the formation.
The game nearly started with a complete disaster. In the third minute Psilli jumped in to intercept a lazy pass from Perin to Kalulu, charged into the box, and fired for the far post. Perin got a fist to the ball as he dove to his left, but only parried as far as Pellegrini, who spared him the embarrassment of conceding a goal off his sorely lacking distribution.
Juve started to establish one some more possession in the wake of the near-error, but they failed to make use of some pretty good positions. Conceição and Yildiz both ballooned shots well over the target, and Cambiaso had the ball poked from him by his defender just as David and Yildiz combined to set him up in the channel.
Roma nearly saw their January striker signing open the scoring in the 25th minute, but Perin made himself big at he near post. He stopped Malen’s shot — with his face, needing some treatment on the field before the ensuing corner kick.
Conceição was denied again, this time thanks to a sliding effort by Cristante, then watched as McKennie’s header flashed across the far post, finally receiving more of its dew we’d need. That was matched by a Cristante shot that was pushed wide.
But with six minutes until the break, Roma found the net. It was somewhat against the run of play, but when Psilli came out for a duel with Kalulu with the ball, the youngster charged toward the box. He dumped it off for Wesley, who unleashed a beautiful curling effort worthy of his home country, ticking through the hands of a diving Perin.
Juve headed into the locker room at the break in a familiar situation: they had probably had the better of things in the first half, but hadn’t capitalized and their opponent had taken advantage. But it looked like they were well on their way to changing less than two minutes into the half, when Conceição hit a rocket volley off a cushioned pass from Bremer into the roof of the net to even the score.
But things weren’t even for long.
Yildiz had nearly put Juve ahead five minutes after the equalizer, flashing a shot a foot wide of the post, but two minutes after that Roma took a corner short. Pellegrini’s cross really ought to have been attacked by Perin, but he stayed glued to his line, and the ball was met by Ndicka, who bullied his way past Cambiaso to fire it into the net.
Juve started to look a little more disjointed as they tried to recover again. Miscommunications would see a player go one way while a pass went another, and there were spaces opening up in the defense. Koné took advantage of one of those spaces to play a long ball through the middle for Malen. Perin once again stayed home instead of coming off his line to play sweeper-keeper before the Dutchman arrived. He didn’t come out until it was far too late, and Malen easily chipped the ball over him once he did. It was 3-1 Roma, and it looked like Juve’s time in the race for the top four was done.
Koopmeiners tried to reduce the deficit immediately, but his shot took a small deflection that made it easy for Svilar to knock the ball down and claim it. But that was the only clear attempt for Juve for quite some time. Their legs started looking heavy — predictable given the hellacious week so many of them have had.
But Juve were back into things out of the blue in the 78th minute. Edon Zhegrova whipped a cross to the back post. The two Turks o nthe field went up for it, but Çelik’s header only glanced off to Boga, whose venomous volley skipped into the net past a stranded Svilar. It was game on.
Roma held on grimly to their position up front, but cracks were beginning to show there as well. Ndicka very nearly put the ball into his own net four minutes from time, and they were lucky when Zhegrova hit a ball right at Svilar after the ensuing corner.
But time was running out. Referee Simone Sozza had only allowed four minutes of stoppage time, and the Giallorossi had killed almost half of it before Kalulu was fouled, giving Juve the chance to hoof one last one into the box. Zhegrova lifted it in, and it was flicked on by McKennie, whose pass skimmed off the thigh of Ndicka and into the path of Gati. He made absolutely no mistake in potting the goal, sending the away section into a frenzy and clawing back a vital point that left Juve’s path to next year’s Champions League open and doable.