Yildiz lifts Juventus to comeback win over Cagliari

Kenan Yildiz is good at football.

I know, it’s the kind of scalding-hot take that you’ve always come to BWRAO for over the years. But sometimes, events transpire to hit you in the face with the Obvious Stick, and there’s nothing for you to do but acknowledge it.

This week has been one of those times. After coming off the bench and taking over in Juve’s wild win over Bodø-Glimt on Tuesday, Yildiz again stepped up to the moment in Saturday’s home match against Cagliari. The Isolani had started the game well and surprised everyone by taking the lead in the 26th minute, but Yildiz responded less than 95 seconds later to put the game back where it started. As Juve slowly began to make their qualitative advantage over their visitors pay, the kid struck again on the stroke of halftime, finishing a beautiful move for the decisive moment of Juve’s 2-1 victory, the team’s first in three league matches and securing three big points ahead of next weekend’s huge clash with defending champions Napoli (barf).

Luciano Spalletti came in still searching for his first win at the Allianz since taking over the manager’s office. He recovered Federico Gatti after he was left home from the Bodø match with an illness, but was still missing Bremer, Daniele Rugani, Carlo Pinsoglio, and Arkadiusz Milik. The 3-4-2-1 remained in place. Michele Di Gregorio had been ill all week, and wasn’t risked with only one training session under his belt, so Mattia Perin started his second straight game in goal. Pierre Kalulu, Lloyd Kelly, and Teun Koopmeiners made up the back three again, while Weston McKennie and Filip Kostic manned the wing-back spots. Manuel Locatelli and Khéphren Thuram started in the double pivot, and Yildiz joined Francisco Conceição in support of Dusan Vlahovic up top.

Cagliari had taken an unconventional tack over the summer, eschewing a more experienced coach in favor of their primavera boss, Fabio Pisacane, and focusing on bringing younger players through their first team. The starting XI was even more callow given the absence of some of their more experienced players, with Yerry Mina, Luca Mazzitelli, Marko Rog, Ze Pedro, and Andrea Belotti all on the shelf. Elia Caprile started in goal behind the back three of Gabriele Zappa, Alessandro Deiola, and Sebastiano Luperto. Marco Palestra and Adam Obert were out wide, bracketing the midfield of Michael Folorunsho, Joseph Liteta, and Michael Adopo. Sebastiano Esposito and Gennaro Borrelli formed the tip of the spear at the top of the formation.

Palestra proved to be a pest from the word go, forcing Kostic back into his own box before the two both went down in a heap. The 20-year-old came up demanding a penalty, but it was abundantly clear that he’d pushed Kostic over, and referee Valerio Crezzini quickly told him to get up. Conceição had a shot blocked a few minutes later, but the game was pretty much devoid of any action toward either goal for another 15 minutes, when Palestra again got a shot in that was blocked behind by Kelly.

Three minutes later, Palestra again made a stamp on the game. It had looked like Kostic had tracked a pass from Zappa, but his touch put the ball into the perfect place for Palestra to pick his pocket and charge into the box. He got to the byline before cutting back to the top of the six-yard box, where Esposito beat a sliding Locatelli by a fraction of a second to tap the ball back across the grain and give Cagliari a lead out of nowhere.

But that lead would last about the time it took to blink.

More precisely, it was 93 seconds between the moment Esposito’s shot went in that the ball crossed the line on the other end of the pitch. Yildiz had pushed a pass from Kalulu back into the path of Thuram, whose touch was a little rushed and sent the ball bouncing into a pocket of empty space in the penalty area. Yildiz pounced, rifling a half-volley into the net with the outside of his right foot.

Only two minutes later, Vlahovic tried to get in on the party, taking a ball from Conceição in the left channel and trying to fire across goal, but Caprile stopped it relatively easily — and Vlahovic quickly stopped running, clearly in serious distress. He signaled to the bench that he needed to come off almost immediately, and left the pitch covering his face with his shirt in frustration. Jonathan David was summoned to replace him.

Juve started to turn the momentum of the game in the direction of the Cagliari goal, and as the clock ticked into first-half stoppage time, a beautiful passing sequence set up Yildiz for his second. It started with Locatelli, whose pass to McKennie was immediately flicked around the corner into the path of Kalulu, who was charging up from the back. Kalulu used his first touch to square the ball to Yildiz, who took one touch to carry the ball toward the left channel before firing back across the grain, zipping it past Caprile to put Juve into the lead.

The pressure continued after the break, and less than two minutes after the restart Conceição was sent clean through the Cagliari defense by David, but couldn’t beat Caprile 1-on-1. Four minutes after that the Portuguese took on his man on the right before putting a ball into the box. It was deflected back, but only as far as Koopmeiners, who had tons of space in the box but fired his shot a foot or so wide of the post.

Substitute Riyad Idrissi tried to catch Perin at his near post, but was rejected with relative ease. On the other end, Conceição kept getting put into good positions, but couldn’t make any of them stick, firing over in the 72nd minute and then putting the ball right at Caprile six minutes later. Allowed to stay in the game, Cagliari looked for a sucker-punch equalizer as the clock ticked on, and with less than 2 1/2 minutes left Mattia Felici drove past Kalulu and tried to surprise Perin at the near post, but the world’s best No. 2 keeper was quick to swallow it up. It was to be the last real chance for either side, and after four minutes of stoppages Crezzini blew the final whistle to bring down the curtain on Spalletti’s first home win for Juve, giving them three important points as they head into a tough month of fixtures.