Juventus 1 (3) - Lazio 2 (2): Initial reaction and random observations

I have a confession that I would like to share with you.

I was preparing for doom. It didn’t matter if it happened in regular time, stoppage time or even extra time, I was preparing for Juventus to provide us more doom. I was preparing for the latest edition of doom in a second half of a 2023-24 season full of it. I couldn’t help but prepare for it based on the simple fact that the last three months have been ... yeah.

And yet ...

Juventus (unintentionally) tried their damndest Tuesday night to completely throw away their two-goal aggregate lead thanks to their win in Turin three weeks ago. Based on how they played for much of the night, there were probably plenty of folks who were surprised that they didn’t throw it away completely. I can probably say I am one of those people who were rather perplexed as to how Juve, a team in completely terrible form, hadn’t seen Lazio turn this Coppa Italia semifinal tie in their favor thanks to Taty Castellanos goals on goals on more goals.

Enter a pair of much-maligned second-half subs to save the day.

That’s right, folks. The two saviors from the doom and the gloom and everything that comes with that both in the written word and the spoken (cuss) words that probably make the neighbors wonder what’s going on since the windows are open were Arek Milik and Timothy Weah. The duo combined for the goal seven minutes from stoppage time that cut Lazio’s lead in half but much more importantly gave Juventus a 3-2 on aggregate at the Stadio Olimpico.

Somehow, some way, they didn’t completely blow it.

Juventus, despite seeing their two-goal lead on aggregate get snatched away from them thanks to some incredibly questionable defending by a pair of Brazilians each time, did just enough to get through to the Coppa Italia final.

That is something you don’t consider when you’re preparing for doom.

When you’re preparing for the doom, you don’t consider the fact that this Juventus team won a lot of games in this kind of way when things were going much better earlier this season. You remember more of the immediate past, one in which Juventus lost games they should have won and didn’t look all that great while doing.

It’s fair to say that Juve didn’t look great for much of Tuesday night’s semifinal. But the fact of the matter was that they just needed that one goal after Lazio came back to even things up on aggregate. You were just waiting for something to turn Juventus’ way. But when you looked up the stats and they had all of one shot on goal as the 80th minute arrived, the line of thinking trended much more toward doom as compared to happy thoughts.

Three minutes later ... happy thoughts.

Allegri has gotten a lot of deserved gruff for his substitution patterns of late. It has made us grumpy for good reason. It has made his players grumpy, too — be it Federico Chiesa or, as we saw against Lazio, an emotional Andrea Cambiaso come off the field when he was playing fairly well. So maybe it was a little bit of poetic justice for Allegri that it was the man who came in for Cambiaso who got the assist and the guy who replaced Juve’s leading scorer this season was positioned perfectly in an open spot in the 6-yard box to finish it.

Shades of late-game heroics from earlier this season. From much, much happier times.

Juventus didn’t win this game. They didn’t need to. They didn’t need to throw away their lead on aggregate, either, but they did and then were faced with a fork in the road. They could have completely folded and let Lazio waltz on by. Or they could have found some sort of answer to get the goal needed to get into the Coppa Italia final.

They chose the much happier road for both themselves and all of us. And because of it, Juve get to play for a trophy this season. It’s not the big trophy that was clinched 24 hours earlier, but come May, Juve’s going to be in a cup final — and that’s totally OK in my book.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS Pre-game thought No. 1: Oh, Adrien Rabiot is letting the hair go wild today. Pre-game thought No. 2: Can we switch away from the tunnel shot for just a couple of seconds because I’m getting a little tired of Mario Gila play with his junk. Pre-game thought No. 3: ALEX SANDRO?! WHY?! And less than 15 minutes in, Alex Sandro was there to let us know that our grumbling about him playing was very much deserved. I mean, come on, man. How do you let a striker just absolutely body you like that? It almost looked like Sandro was told to duck and cover as he braced for impact. That, my friends, is not exactly how you imagine one of your center backs defending. Go up like Yerry Mina or something. Just don’t do what you ended up doing, Alex. Please. Oh, but it’s good that Alex Sandro is now all of one appearance away from equaling a record set by Pavel Nedved. Because those two guys deserve to be in the same sentence. (Watch Allegri trot out Sandro to break the record in the Coppa Italia final. Good times.) One last Sandro thing: He’s one of Sofascore’s highest-rated players for Juve in this game. Sometimes technology isn’t always good for this sport. If you were asking yourself if this still counts as corto muso, you are most definitely on the right track. It’s technically not a win, but I would say winning a two-legged tie with a goal in the 83rd minute after blowing your 2-0 aggregate lead is at least some form of corto muso. Thank goodness for Mattia Perin. He made a couple of big saves. As always, you wonder about a lot of position groups at Juventus. But man, when Mattia Perin is your backup goalkeeper, you don’t have to worry all that much about what’s going on between the sticks. Bremer’s defending on Lazio’s second goal ... not good. The entire way the team defended that whole sequence wasn’t good, but seeing somebody as strong as Bremer get muscled off the ball and see a goal scored right after that was not a good couple of seconds. Guessing the Italian press will be totally level-headed when discussing Cambiaso’s emotion as he came off the field. Yep, totally reasonable. For the record, I was confused as to why Cambiaso was taken out, too. That’s because I thought Cambiaso was one of the few Juve players who were having a good game. Obviously he felt that way as well. But hey, it turned out for the best — thankfully. Ah, more Dusan Vlahovic misses in front of goal. That early chance in the first half wasn’t the easiest of hits, but that’s still something that probably should have been scored. (It also required a pretty good save from the keeper, so it’s not like he totally flubbed it.) There’s Federico Chiesa pumping up Charly Alcaraz as he’s about come on like the good teammate I know he is. That was a good moment. It made me smile. I like when we get that version of Chiesa as compared to the grumpy one. I don’t know what Allegri is going to do with Manuel Locatelli suspended for the final. I feel like that’s probably something we should discuss further in a couple of weeks. So, who do you wanna see in the Coppa Italia final? Yes, that means there’s one more game for Juventus to play this season. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It does! You know what, let’s run a poll for that question I just asked to wrap things up for this one. Poll Who do would you prefer Juventus to play in the 2024 Coppa Italia final?