Things are returning to normal in the Italian Serie A. AS Roma aren’t perfect anymore, Juventus beat Napoli 3-0 in the first meeting between the two, and Paul Pogba follows a beautiful Andrea Pirlo free kick with what might be the best goal we’ve seen this season.
After Roma dropped points again, Napoli arrived in Turin to play Juventus knowing that the winner of the match gets to cut down the gap from the top of the table to only one point. As with the rest of Napoli’s away matches this season, things went badly right from the start.
Fernando Llorente isn’t doing much this season for Juventus, but he does get the scrappy goal here and there, this time needing less than two minutes to get on the scoresheet, and he was possibly slightly offside, although nothing Napoli will complain about, being too close for anyone to notice.
Juventus blitzed the Napoli goal for the first 30 minutes, bringing out the best of Pepe Reina with some incredible saves, especially one amazing reaction to close range Leonardo Bonucci header. But at some point Andrea Pirlo became more closely watched, and Napoli took over the pitch. Lorenzo Insigne was the most dangerous man for Napoli, and Gonzalo Higuain had a chance or two, but their midfield wasn’t good enough and creative enough throughout the match to create too many chances until it was too late.
The second half was dominated by Napoli, but Juventus created the more dangerous chances. Following a terrible miss by Arturo Vidal, Andrea Pirlo got himself a chance to finish off the match from a similar position to his goal from the Catania match. Same distance, same result, sending a perfect shot Reina had no chance of stopping.
The last nail in the Napoli coffin came from Paul Pogba, who can’t score ugly goals. He set himself up by letting the ball jump on his knee once before sending an amazing volley from almost 30 meters, rattling the post before landing in the net. Gianluigi Buffon had a chance to make some saves afterwards as Juventus were left with 10 men (Angelo Ogbonna sent off), but Napoli never really recovered from the two wonder goals, that put Juventus right in the thick of the title race once again.