Perhaps we should’ve seen it coming. Giorgio Chiellini even tried to warn us how his side would win at Wembley. “Juventus must play as Juventus,” the veteran central defender told Il Giornale earlier this week. “If we play our game, we win,” he added, and nobody who watched the Italian giants in their last-16 Champions League clash against Tottenham could deny that that is exactly what they saw.
Son Heung-Min opened the scoring, taking advantage of an uncharacteristic slip from Gigi Buffon to hand Spurs a 3-2 aggregate lead, and with their two away goals it looked like the Bianconeri were going to fall short against English opponents once again. But over the past two summers, Max Allegri has been handed an incredible array of attacking talent, and in a mere 169 seconds, two of his star men turned the tie around completely.
Ghosting in at the far post, it was Gonzalo Higuain who got Juve level, timing both his run and his attempt to turn the ball home perfectly from Sami Khedira’s header across the box. Hugo Lloris stood no chance of stopping it, but the big no.9 knew it wasn’t enough, grabbing the ball and sprinting back to halfway in order to restart the match as quickly as possible.
Higuain then turned provider, playing a perfect through-ball to Paulo Dybala who – going one-on-one with the goalkeeper – seemed to have all the time in the world to pick his spot. The man dubbed La Joya (“The Jewel”) made no mistake, giving the Old Lady a 3-2 lead and negating the away goals Spurs had bagged in Turin. But there were 20 minutes remaining, and Mauricio Pochettino’s men are usually so dangerous going forward, scoring goals almost at will and with a plethora of players who are at their best in the opposition’s third of the pitch.
It was then, when Juve needed it most, that their experience, the forged-in-the-fire steel that runs through this team and has always been its hallmark, came to the fore. Saying that Juventus have a good defence ranks alongside water being wet and the Pope being Catholic as one of life’s certainties, and despite the high profile departures of Dani Alves and Leonardo Bonucci that remains the case.
Indeed, before this clash, the Bianconeri had been on a ridiculous run that began on November 19. In their 20 matches since that date, Allegri’s men had conceded just three goals and kept a staggering 18 clean sheets. Read that again. Eighteen clean sheets in their last twenty games. This is a side that doesn’t just know how to defend, it relishes shutting out opponents in a way that few others in European football can do and as the clock ticked past the 70th minute, they knew that if they held Spurs at bay until full time they would advance to the quarterfinals.
White shirts poured forward in search of the one goal they needed to change that, and time after time they were turned back by the Italy international. In a simply ridiculous display of his best qualities, the 33-year-old was first to seemingly every ball that came his way, registering four tackles, two interceptions and thirteen(!) clearances.
He also won four aerial duels and blocked three shots, lacking only a blood-stained shirt to make this “a typical Chiellini performance,” something he has done countless times for Juve. He was ably assisted by Andrea Barzagli, the Fiesole native starting out at right-back but moving to the middle during the second half to add four tackles, two interceptions and four clearances of his own.
What made this worse for the Spurs who had packed out the national stadium is that the two defenders – along with Buffon – were not just good enough to stop Harry Kane and co. from finding a way through, it was that they enjoyed the challenge. Each time Barzagli or Chiellini made a crucial intervention, the goalkeeper was there with a fist bump, celebrating as if they had scored a goal rather than denied one. At one point, Buffon made a save and Chiellini bent over and fired a succession of punches into his kidneys, screaming with joy at seeing one more attack thwarted and one more minute tick off the clock.
“That is the kind of players they are,” Allegri said when asked about the stalwarts in his backline, while Chiellini would admit that the team needs to improve going forwards. “Year by year, you learn, you grow, but considering the quality at our disposal, we need to play better,” he told Mediaset Premium in an emotional interview shortly after the final whistle. “We are aware of that and talk about it because we are not blind, we are not just happy to get the result and that’s it.”
His words bode well for the future, particularly as attention turns to the draw for the next round where one of Europe’s top clubs might well await the Bianconeri. But for now, on this night, a performance like this was good enough to get them past Tottenham, and Juventus must be thankful Giorgio Chiellini can deliver them. We should’ve known.
