Match date: 10 April 2013

Juventus were well outplayed by Bayern Munich in the first leg of this quarterfinal tie and following that display it was always going to be difficult to overturn their two goal deficit against the newly crowd Bundesliga champions.

Antonio Conte stuck with his 3-5-2, but made several changes, bringing on Paul Pogba for the suspended Vidal as well as Simone Padoin, Kwadwo Asamoah, and Mirko Vucinic as he looked for individual performances to change the course of the tie.

Jupp Heynckes played a relativel unchanged side, but brought Javi Martinez in for Luis Gustavo after serving his suspension in the first leg and started Robben who replaced the injured Toni Kroos in the first leg.

Juventus Start Well

Unlike the first leg of the tie, perhaps because of the early goal from Alaba in that match, Juventus looked to get forward and when without the ball, pressed well. In the first leg, they were pinned back, something they’ve rarely had to encounter in Serie A as most teams sit back and allow Juventus the ability to pass the ball around. Bayern Munich, however, are a high tempo team and press as a unit, which clearly disrupted Juventus. This leg though, they seemed more prepared and were pressing well themselves.

In just about the same amount of time of the pitch as the first leg, Quagliarella received the ball more times and in better areas of the pitch than the first leg. He also had 3 shots compared to 0 in the first leg. Vucinic’s inclusion was more influential, replacing Matri, he received the ball 37 times compared to Matri’s 16 and completed over 3 times as many passes. Below are the striker partnerships from the first and second leg and their passes received. Both Vucinic and Quagliarella received passes in much more dangerous areas rather than having to go deep to find the ball as Matri and Quagliarella had to do in the first leg.

Juventus’ mentality off the ball was also much improved. They didn’t press well in the first leg, but at the start of the second leg, both Vucinic and Quagliarella were pressing the centre backs and would drop in to make sure Schweinsteiger didn’t get too much of the ball. Paul Pogba also added a good amount of energy in the midfield to support his forwards’ pressing.

Bayern Dictate the Tempo

After the opening half hour of the match, Bayern were able to fully control the tempo of the match, largely due to the Juventus’ fowards no longer marking Schweinsteiger tightly. As Bayern started to keep the ball more and more, the Vucinic and Qauglairella stopped not only pressing, but perhaps more importantly, putting pressure on Schweinsteiger, who up until the 35th minute, had attempted 27 passes, of which 10 were unsuccessful, with credit due to Juventus pressing the Bayern Munich ball carriers well. However, once Vucinic and Qauglairella stopped pressuring him, Schweinsteiger attempted another 56 passes, of which only 3 were unsuccessful.

His passing, as seen above, wasn’t too penetrating, aside from his assist, but it got the ball into wide areas, a place where Bayern were easily able to exploit Juventus and he was always an option for the likes of Lahm, Alaba, Ribery and Robben and was involved in 3 of the 4 top passing combinations. The four players listed above in the wide areas were able to do what they wanted as Juventus were usually down 1v2 in the wide areas to Bayern’s winger and full back on each side. Ribery completed each one of his passes in Juventus’ half, with only two of his passes unsuccessful throughout the game.

The opening of the second half was a bit frantic with Juventus trying to find a goal that could get them in the tie, but again Bayern were able to settle play down and dictate the tempo and as the game went on, Juventus grew increasingly frustrated at their lack of ball possession.

Conclusion

Juventus were outplayed throughout the tie for two reasons. The first being that they don’t face much opposition in Serie A that challenges their tempo of play. The high-tempo pressing of Bayern caused significant problems for Juventus in the first leg, from Buffon, who tried to play short but was consistently off the mark, to Andrea Pirlo who had an uncharacteristically low pass completion rate.

The second being that they faced Celtic in the first knockout round who, with all respect to Celtic, were not going to be able to test Juventus and prepare for better opposition in the future rounds.

It was Antonio Conte’s first European campaign and so because of those two things, he may have been a bit naive to the idea that his team weren’t going to be on the ball more than their opposition and thus didn’t have a plan for when they were without the ball.

Bayern Munich showed their abilities in both legs. They were certainly shaky at times in the second leg when Juventus did try to press, but they were able to settle the game down well enough to kill the tie off.