Bayern Munich joined Juventus in suffering Champions League elimination to Unai Emery’s Villarreal, but that doesn’t give Massimiliano Allegri’s side an excuse for their poor European performance.
The German giants lost 2-1 on aggregate to the Spanish challengers yesterday, only managing to pick up a 1-1 draw at home as Samuel Chukwueze scored an 88th minute equaliser to secure the result. Villarreal have now qualified for the Champions League semi-finals, an incredible feat for a team competing with significantly less resources than their opponents.
However, Bayern’s loss cannot be used by Juventus or their fans to justify their miserable work in the Champions League this season. It’s been a long time since the heights of the final in 2017 and suffering elimination at the hands of Ajax, Lyon, Porto and now Villarreal highlight that there’s issues limiting the team’s work on a European stage.
Allegri’s Juventus only managed to score one goal across two legs against Villarreal and €80m man Dusan Vlahovic also failed to hit the mark, suggesting more of a tactical failing instead of the Serbian’s culpability.
The Old Lady need to change shake things up in the summer if they want any hope of returning to the latter stage of the Champions League once again, so all eyes will be on Allegri and the work carried out in Turin.
This Allegri is even happier than Emri about this result. Villareal had two shots on target during both legs vs. Bayern and they scored on both. But what do you expect from Allegri if teams in the relegation zone are taking points off his team. I still can’t believe he’s being employed as a coach.
Villareal are Europe League winners, they’re not an easy team.
People don’t give them credit because they’re Villareal, but they fully deserved their qualification at both Juve and Bayern.
Bayern created several chances yesterday and did not take advantage of them.
Juve were slightly worse.
You don’t say! Thanks for this insightful blog Apollo!!!
While they failed against Villareal, you can’t say their campaign up to then was ‘miserable’ after topping their group. Yes, the manager is conservative, and the team played poorly against Chelsea in the return leg, but against Villareal it was simply a case of playing reasonably well and having heaps of chances and Villareal being totally clinical with the 4-5 chances they had over 2 legs. As for Vlahovic, no he did not fail to hit the mark – he scored the fastest Juve goal in the UCL in the first game and was unlucky to not add another couple in the return leg. Not having key players available in the knock-out stages, as usual, hurt Juventus.
Sorry but how is Juve having a “poor season”, when they are comfortably in 4th place, & up until a week ago was still being considered in the title race? That’s a much better position than they were in at this stage last season. Mathematically they could still win the title, as they’re only 6 points back of first with 6 to play. There’s the Coppa as well, so they could still even end the season as a champion of something. And all that while having a sub-standard quality squad, plus significant injury problems.
Disappointing? Sure. But poor? That’s a nonsense take.