Juventus vs Real Madrid match report: Carlos Tevez gives Juve the edge after goals from Alvaro Morata and Cristiano Ronaldo

Juventus 2 Real Madrid 1: Italian side take lead to Bernabeu thanks to victory in Champions League first leg in Turin

Tim Rich
Tuesday 05 May 2015 22:25 BST
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Juventus and Real Madrid are part of European football’s grand aristocracy and this was the kind of duel they used to fight out on the steps of Versailles. When it was done, the question in the night air was which of them had lost the most blood?

Cristiano Ronaldo’s away goal means the odds must just favour Madrid reaching a second, successive European Cup final. Here, however, the Italian champions showed they could handle most of what the Bernabeu is likely to hurl at them in the second leg. A draw, that clichéd staple of Italian football, would give Andrea Pirlo his grand farewell in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. Theirs was a heroic performance, a mixture of belief, spirit and technical precision.

Giorgio Chiellini’s bandaged head gave the photographers an image to sum it up in a single shot. And yet it could have been a better night. In its final moments, Pirlo sent across a free-kick that Fernando Llorente met at close range and which Iker Casillas in the Madrid goal scrambled clear. Had it gone in, Juventus would have had a two-goal cushion and that might have been plenty.

Before it was rebuilt, this ground was called The Stadium of the Alps and everyone in Turin understood Juventus had a mountain to climb against a team that even Pirlo described as “the biggest and most prestigious club in the world”. And yet before 10 minutes were up they had established a base camp of sorts. Juventus were a goal up and they were the better team.

Real coach Carlo Ancelotti had argued before the game that the side that showed the least fear would win. The odds may not have been in their favour but as the minutes ticked away to kick-off Juventus at least put on a front.

When they rebuilt the Delle Alpi, they also put in a new sound system and when they played the club’s battle hymn “Story of a Great Love” amid sepia images of the Juventus greats, it was sung with fervour, with black-and-white scarves raised above heads, the banners unfurled. Then a vast image of the European Cup was displayed on the stadium’s most passionate corner, the Curva Sud, although why Real Madrid should have been intimidated by the sight of a trophy they had won more than any other club in Europe was anyone’s guess.

And yet for the 27 minutes before Ronaldo dragged Madrid level, the champions of Europe seemed nervous and not a little afraid, none more so than Casillas, who, with his first touches that went straight to Juventus players, demonstrated just why Real are so keen to sign David de Gea from Manchester United.

In the opening exchanges Alvaro Morata, who had grown up in Madrid and played for Real in last season’s European Cup final, attempted to beat Casillas with an outrageous chip and almost succeeded.

The 22-year-old did not have to wait too much longer to beat his former captain. Stephan Lichtsteiner found space for Tevez that should have been occupied by Toni Kroos, and the Argentine, with the confidence of being Serie A’s leading goalscorer, loosed off a shot that Casillas could only push away. Morata was lurking a yard out.

It was the proverbial goal that Harry Redknapp’s missus could have tucked away in stilettos.

Morata did not celebrate, which was rather precious of him considering he had left the Bernabeu claiming he had no relationship with Ancelotti. His failure to celebrate scarcely mattered – everyone else did.

Madrid were suddenly overrun. Dani Carvajal was caught in possession and Tevez began bearing down once more on goal. The policy of employing Sergio Ramos, for years La Liga’s best central defender, as a midfielder was working as well as Kevin Keegan’s disastrous experiment with Gareth Southgate against Germany in the last game at the old Wembley.

For Ancelotti all this would have been deeply troubling. A dozen years ago Madrid, the defending European champions, had been knocked out by Juventus in the semi-finals. Real’s president, Florentino Perez, used the elimination as an excuse to fire Vicente Del Bosque, the man who had brought two European Cups to the Bernabeu and replace him with Carlos Queiroz, who had won very little.

Even by Perez’s standards, it was a jaw-dropping decision and what had happened once could happen again.

No side, however, with the kind of resources Real Madrid possess, are out of any contest. They had begun to pull themselves back into the game on the flanks, with Isco and Marcelo overlapping on the left and James Rodriguez working his way cleverly down the right.

It was the Colombian’s skill that gave Madrid their precious away goal. Rodriguez pushed himself between Arturo Vidal and Leonardo Bonucci and floated a delicious cross over Gianluigi Buffon that Ronaldo headed home from as close in as Morata had been.

It was his 54th goal of the season and his 76th in the Champions League. He chose to celebrate it.

When, just before the interval, Rodriguez met Isco’s cross with a thundering, diving header that clattered against Buffon’s crossbar, it seemed the tide had turned towards the champions.

Ramos was starting to find his feet, dispossessing Tevez with a single flick of his boot and Real were coming forward when everything turned once more. Marcelo had just unleashed a shot that, had it not been blocked, would have surely tested Buffon to the limit.

Juventus responded by breaking away. Marcelo cynically took out Morata, who was running off the ball, but Tevez kept running with it and had gone half the length of the pitch when Carvajal brought him down.

Martin Atkinson had already turned down two Juventus appeals for a penalty, the third was undeniable. Naturally, Tevez opted to take it.

Buffon, a veteran of a penalty shoot-out in a World Cup final, could not bear to watch. The Curva Sud told him Juventus were ahead.

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