Juventus beat Atalanta 2-1 in a tightly-contested final at the Stadio Citta del Tricolore on Wednesday to win their 14th Copa Italia title.
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Juventus beat Atalanta 2-1 at the Stadio Citta del Tricolore on Wednesday to win their 14th Copa Italia title. Dejan Kulusevski opened the scoring for Juventus before Ruslan Malinovskiy leveled the score before half time. Federico Chiesa scored the winner for Andrea Pirlo’s side 17 minutes from time. It was also the farewell game for legendary Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon. He will be leaving the club for the second time at the end of the season. Cristiano Ronaldo won his first Copa Italia title.
Kulusevski gave Juventus the lead with a beautiful curler in the 31st minute. Cuadrado started the counter attack and Weston Mckennie laid the ball to Kulusevski inside the penalty area. The 21-year-old striker then curled the ball past Atalanta goalkeeper Pierluigi Gollini with the inside of his left foot.
But en minutes after the goal, Atalanta equalized through Malinovskiy’s powerful strike from the edge of the penalty box. Remo Freuler won the ball after a tussle with Adrien Rabiot and laid the ball to the right flank. The cut back found Malinovskiy on the edge of the box. The Ukrainian controlled the ball and fired it past Buffon with his left foot.
Chiesa and Kulusevki combined to make the score 2-1 in the 73rd minute infront of 4300 odd spectators. Chiesa slotted the ball past Gollini into the Atalata net after playing a one-two with Kulusevski to getting inside the penalty box.
Atalanta started the game brightly. Early in the game, Palomino’s attempt was saved by Buffon’s outstretched legs and Duvan Zapata fired the ball off target after shrugging off Chiellini’s challenge. The 43-year-old Italian goalkeeper had a very good game between the post’s to win his sixth Copa Italia title 22 years after winning his first with Parma.
Chiesa worked his way into the Atalanta penalty area and delivered a low cross which was flicked towards goal by Kulusevski, but Gollini got down quickly and made a superb right-handed save at the near post to deny the striker his second of the night.
Both Juventus and Atalanta had lost their previous Italian Cup finals. Juventus finished runner-up to Napoli last year and Atalanta lost the final in 2019.
