Juventus 3 – Roma 3: Initial reaction and random observations

Because I am an upstanding citizen, I will be honest with all of your for a minute: I was ready to start the process of writing Juventus’ obituary. They were down 3-1, they weren’t looking sharp by any stretch of the imagination and they were simply an squad that was plenty tired even before this week began that just had 120-plus minutes of excruciating Champions League football on their legs just four days ago.

As the final few minutes ticked away, the first part of the headline read the score I thought it would finish at: Juventus 1 – Roma 3.

I was ready for the doom, the gloom and everything in between. Clearly Juventus had other ideas.

Thanks to Federico Gatti’s 93rd-minute equalizer against Roma, what could have spelled the true beginning of the end of Juventus’ Champions League qualification hopes were suddenly put to bed for at least a little bit of time. Just when it looked like Juventus were out, they clawed their way back through Gatti and fellow second-half sub Jérémie Boga, allowing the Bianconeri to salvage a 3-3 draw on Sunday night at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome on a night that had us seeing the same problems that have absolutely haunted this squad over the past six games.

The script was nearly full written about Juve being down in sixth and seven points behind fourth-place Roma after this weekend’s results.

While they may still be in sixth, they’re the same amount of points off Roma as they were coming into the Sunday night showdown in the Italian capital. It’s still four points, which certainly isn’t the kind of doom scenario as being seven points off fourth place with 11 games to go would have been if Roma had held their lead.

Because, let’s face it, even when Boga cut Roma’s lead to 3-2 with 12 minutes to go, it’s not like Juventus were exactly flying high and filling many with a ton of optimism that they were going to complete the comeback and get a point out of this one. They were looking like a tired squad that was stretched and pretty much just scrambling to get much of anything done in the final third. The lack of finishing their first-half chances was yet again haunting them — hey, where have we heard that before? — and they were absolutely killed by it.

Instead of getting an early lead and controlling the game, Roma were the ones doing that. Juventus were forced, again, to chase the game and it was playing right into Gian Piero Gasperini’s hands having set his team up to be patient yet dangerous against a tired squad that was only going to fatigue more as Sunday night’s game went on.

That proved to be the perfect approach for Roma, who only added to Juventus’ defensive woes since the start of February.

Think about this: Juventus have allowed a whopping 21 goals in their last eight games in all competitions, a stretch that still includes just one win domestically.

It wasn’t so long ago — although it feels like it with how the last few years have gone — that Juventus’ defense wouldn’t even allow 20 goals in a season. Or at least something in the low- or mid-20s. But over the last seven games, that is pretty much the defining number in how this team has suddenly seen their positive results absolutely dry up against tougher competition.

Somehow, they were able to find the fight in them no matter how exhausted they were to get something out of this trip to Rome. It could have been more — especially with how they played and created chances to score in the first half. But because of their very well-established shortcomings, they were once again forced to scramble.

They got a point and kept the Champions League hopes alive — which is something none of us probably would have been thinking if this ended up being a Roma win like it looked as it was headed for the better part of the 90 minutes.

And here I thought Juventus might have been tempting fate a little too much when they threw out this fact in the short match preview they published a couple of days ago:

Roma are the team that Juventus have beaten the most times in Serie A, with 87 Bianconeri wins in 183 matches. Furthermore, the Bianconeri have scored 280 goals in the league against the Roman side.

Juventus are unbeaten in 10 of their last 11 Serie A matches against Roma.

For about 92 minutes, we thought that trend was goign to come to an end. Thankfully, Fred Cats came to the rescue and proved to be the No. 9 and poacher in the box that Juventus have been looking for much of the last month or two. Heck, the No. 4 on the back of his jersey might look a little like the No. 9 after a few celebratory drinks considering Juventus didn’t lose a game that it looked like they were going to.

Thankfully, Roma happened. That’s also something that is also very well established.

So there’s that, which is nice.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS