It was Fiorentina who dominated the fixture and Jonathan Ikone hit the woodwork, but Juventus won with a lucky ricochet off Lorenzo Venuti in stoppage-time.
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Juventus head coach Massimiliano Allegri wasn’t too happy with his team’s performance in the 1-0 win over Fiorentina in the Coppa Italia semi-final first leg clash on Wednesday. He felt that his side “didn’t concede a goal because they made mistakes”. It was Fiorentina who dominated the fixture and Jonathan Ikone hit the woodwork, but Juventus won with a lucky ricochet off Lorenzo Venuti in stoppage-time. The second leg is planned for Turin on April 20 and away goals do count double on aggregate in this stage of the tournament.
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“We have to congratulate Fiorentina on a good performance. We suffered with two counter-attacks in the first half, again in the second, and fortunately we didn’t concede because they made mistakes,” Allegri told Mediaset.
“The team then held out well, we ran very few risks and we had some favourable situations where we should’ve played a better final ball, then Cuadrado went for goal rather than the pass and we could’ve scored there.
“Winning in Florence is not easy, the team showed maturity, because this is a difficult match, we were missing a lot of players and Marley Ake worked hard.
Ikone had the best chance of the match in the second half when Torreira played a brilliant through ball to find the Frenchman’s run in between two defenders. The 23-year-old cut inside past Mattia de Sciglio, before curling a left-foot shot on to the far post.
“Defensively, we did well, because apart from those counter-attacks, we allowed very little. We made mistakes with the final ball, Cuadrado made up for that earlier mistake by putting the ball into the box at the end and that created the goal.
“It was a good performance from everyone, we are down to the bare bones at the moment. Fortunately, Dybala, Bernardeschi and Rugani will be back tomorrow and we’ll have a few fresh legs.”
Just when it looked like the match would end in a draw, against the run of play, Juve drew the first blood on 93 minutes when Juan Cuadrado’s cross hit Venturi, ricocheted into the net from a couple of yards. There was nothing he could do about it as the ball bounced in off his shin.
