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Leonardo Bonucci in the spotlight as Inter cannot stop remarkable Juventus

There were can you pick the most expensive canada goose parka eight points between Juventus and Inter before they met in this season’s first Derby d’Italia. Eight points afterwards, too. A 0-0 draw at San Siro last October left Inter joint-second in the table cg, canada goose coat 1000 calorie a day meal plan and their rivals all the way back in 14th.

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And yet, Massimiliano Allegri was unfazed. The Juventus manager told reporters afterward that: “We can catch them up in 10 matches.”

That turned out to be an overly optimistic prediction, but only just. In practice, Juventus would need 11 games to pull level with Inter and one more than that to overtake them. By the time the Bianconeri had won the rematch, 2-0 in Turin on Sunday night, they were 13 points clear of Roberto Mancini’s side.

To put that another way: in the space of 19 games, Juventus had achieved a 21-point swing.

It is worth stopping to spell out that statistic, to remind ourselves of how extraordinary the champions’ progress has been. This was Juventus’s 16th win in 17 Serie A games, but also their eighth consecutive clean sheet. Gigi Buffon has gone 746 minutes without conceding a goal in the league – a new personal record even for one of the best keepers there has ever been.

Such feats are not achieved in isolation. Buffon was brilliant in the one instant that he was truly called upon against Inter, plunging to his left and thrusting out an arm to block a close-range effort from Éder. But that was in the 91st minute. His first save canada goose coat 1000 calorie a day meal plan of the match – a more routine stop from an Adem Ljajic free-kick – had arrived just moments before.

For all the attention (rightly) lavished upon the likes of Paul Pogba and Paulo Dybala, defence remains the greatest strength of Allegri’s team. Juventus welcomed Giorgio Chiellini back from injury on Sunday, reverting to the 3-5-2 formation that has suited them best this season – only to see the centre-back limp out again after 35 minutes. Daniele Rugani stepped off the bench to replace him, and the Old Lady carried on without missing a beat.

Not content with preserving a clean sheet, Juventus went further: turning an old saying on its head as they made defence the best form of attack. Their first goal arrived from the boot of Leonardo Bonucci, who volleyed an accidental Danilo D’Ambrosio knockdown back across Samir Handanovic and into the far corner of the net with more authority than is reasonable for a player who starts at centre-back.

Bonucci, of course, is no ordinary defender. Not casually did Pep Guardiola describe him last week as “one of my all-time favourite players”. Where Chiellini, when fit, is the heart and the muscle in Juventus’s backline, Bonucci is the brain and the vision. With a range of passing that most midfielders would envy, he is as comfortable constructing attacks as breaking up those of his opponents.

Gazzetta dello Sport note in Monday’s edition that he played more passes against Inter than any Juventus team-mate. When he was not sharing the ball around, Bonucci was instead carrying it out of defence himself, at one point attempting – and almost succeeding – to get around Miranda with a Cruyff turn deep in the opposition half. La Repubblica christened him as “Beckenbonucci” – a nod to the legendary Bayern sweeper Franz Beckenbauer.

Inter are quite familiar with his talents. Bonucci came up through their own youth team, and made his senior debut under Mancini in 2006. The first league title on the player’s CV is the canada goose coat 1000 bulbs coupons one that Inter were awarded in the wake of the Calciopoli scandal at the end of that season – one that Juventus’s supporters mocked with clown-themed choreography before kick-off.

The Nerazzurri are easy targets for ridicule at present. buy canada goose parka ottawa As well as Juventus are playing, Inter have been catastrophic. Where once a title challenge seemed plausible, now even a spot in next season’s Europa League is starting to look like it might slip away. Down to fifth in the table, their nine points accrued since the midway point of this season are fewer than last-placed Verona.

For Bonucci to have dealt this latest blow might have been that little bit harder to swallow. Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that they did not let him slip through their fingers for nothing. He was traded away to Genoa in 2009 as part of the deal that saw Diego Milito and Thiago Motta move in the opposite direction – two players who would prove fundamental to Inter’s subsequent treble win.

Of more immediate concern to Mancini ought to be the lack of a creative spark in his team, a situation not helped by his persistence in adapting his formation to mirror that of each week’s opponent. What once felt like an innovative method for cancelling out tactical advantages now feels like a direct impediment to Inter’s hopes of ever establishing their own personality.

A midfield trio of Felipe Melo, Gary Medel and authenitc canada goose outlet store in gta with discount price Geoffrey Kondogbia is never going to sweep opponents away in a trance of tiki-taka, but earlier in this season that group was at least imposing itself physically and fighting matches on its own terms. Against Juventus, those same players sat too deep and watched as Alex Sandro and Stephan Lichtsteiner ran away from them down the flanks.

It was not until the 84th minute that Álvaro Morata, on as a substitute, added Juventus’s second goal from the penalty spot. But this result had never been in doubt from the moment of Bonucci’s opener. Even before that, the only question was whether Juventus could carry on wasting every opportunity as they had during a fruitless opening salvo.

Bonucci swept away any doubts, keeping his cool where the likes of Dybala and Mario Mandzukic had failed to do so. On the night when DiCaprio would win his first Oscar, it was another Leonardo who deservingly stole the spotlight in Turin.

Talking points

• Huge game coming up on Monday night at the Stadio Artemio Franchi. Napoli need to beat Fiorentina to stay within a point of Juventus at the top, but don’t rule the Viola out of the title race just yet, either. If they were to win this match, and then beat Roma on Friday, then they would close to within three points of first place themselves before Juve play away to Atalanta on Sunday.

• It has been a less than ideal preparation for this match for Lorenzo Insigne, who was mugged at gunpoint in Naples over the weekend. It was reported that one of his assailants had recognised him half-way through the robbery, and had the gall to ask the player to dedicate a goal to him on Monday.

• Previously, all focus in Naples had been on Gonzalo Higuaín’s loss of form. The Argentinian is without a goal in four matches across all competitions – a stat that can only be considered noteworthy because he had previously scored 26 in 29 – and Napoli are winless in that same stretch. Maurizio Sarri had been downplaying the dry run, and cannot have been thrilled to hear team owner Aurelio De Laurentiis chime in with the suggestion that Higuaín needs to lose a little weight. “If somebody has an extra kilo and a half on them it’s like walking around with a ball and chain,” opined De Laurentiis. “He needs to recapture the brilliant physical shape that he was in a month ago, then the goals will come back too.”

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• After going eight matches without a win, Sampdoria would have slipped into the relegation zone if they had lost at home to Frosinone on Sunday. They avoided that fate with a 2-0 victory, apparently inspired by the talking to that they got from a group of fans at their Bogliasco training ground a day earlier. Centre-back Andrea Ranocchia tweeted a picture of said supporters afterwards, along with the message: “We won this match yesterday.”

• A bad weekend for the bottom three across benefits of canada goose jacket the board. Carpi had a chance to buy canada goose jacket uk strengthen their own bid for survival against an Atalanta side that had not won a match since 6 December, but ultimately required a late (and disputed) penalty just to snatch a point. Verona were hoping to extend their recent revival against struggling Udinese, but crashed to a 2-0 defeat.

• James Pallotta flew into Rome overnight on Sunday, and is expected to sit down with Francesco Totti to discuss the player’s future in the coming days. In the meantime, Roma continue to thrive without any involvement from their captain – winning their sixth consecutive league game to go third before Fiorentina’s match against Napoli.

Results: Carpi 1-1 Atalanta, Chievo 1-0 Genoa, Empoli 1-3 Roma, Juventus 2-0 Inter, Milan 1-0 Torino, Palermo 0-0 Bologna, Sampdoria 2-0 Frosinone, Udinese 2-0 Verona