The top two teams in Italian football’s top flight the last couple of years will be facing off this August 31, when the rest of the footballing world focus its attention to Rome where the defending champions of the league take on arguably the biggest threat to their title reign as the brand new set of battles in the 2015-16 Italian Serie A season continue to be waged with the competing teams that we have this year looking to pick up the pace. However, after Juve and Roma both collectively became the embodiment of excellence in Italy’s premier football stage, things did not work out so well in the respective match-ups that both of these sides had on opening week – with our reigning Serie A kings bowing to Udinese, and Roma getting denied of a victory by Hellas Verona. Since these two Italian clubs are considered as the league’s two premier squads today, for them to struggle the way they did coming out of the gates definitely don’t promote much confidence to their respective fan base. And once they face-off for their first meeting of the current Serie A title chase, you just know that neither of these teams will be accepting anything less than a victory on game day.
Juventus, listed by SBOBET.com with the best football odds of *2.85 to beat AS Roma, will probably come into this one as the more desperate side following their loss to Udinese at the Stadio Friuli in Udine where the Bianconeri suffered a 1-0 defeat at the hands of a football club that had a dismal 16th place finish in the last Italian Serie A campaign. Yes, the champions of Italian football failed to look and play the part in the season opener as they just couldn’t get anything on the board in spite of the fact that they pretty much controlled possession of the match-up.
To make matters worse, the White Blacks were playing in front of their loyal fan base at Juventus stadium where their hometown supporters were counting on a dominant performance, expecting to see their local football club to show the usual assertive form that allow them to capture the Italian Serie A trophy for four seasons in a row. Unfortunately for those fans, things did not go the way that they would’ve hoped as Juve suffered their first home defeat in the top flight in 48 match-ups, dropping the opening game of their Serie A campaign in the premier stage after 87 years of always coming out on the winning end to begin their bid for the championship.
For what it’s worth, Juventus did everything that they can to win the game, hoping to maintain their status as defending champions – at least for the season opener, it just so happened that the goals that they used to score effortlessly were hard to come by. ”For 70 minutes we did what we had to do, all we missed was the goal. Playing against Udinese was not easy, we created chances in both the first and second half, but we had to defend better at the goal,” Juve head coach Massimiliano Allegri said, following their 1-0 loss to the Udine outfit. ”We did not deserve this defeat, but football is like that. We had many chances but in the end we lost.”
”We must remember that we are still in the beginning of the season and many of our players have just arrived. The team worked hard and created chances. Udinese scored with their first shot on goal, we must have the confidence to score a goal at any time and we must not lose patience.”
”It’s a tough defeat to take, we were unlucky today, we just couldn’t find the decisive touch in front of goal. But we’ve got a big game with Roma,” Allegri added. ”We’ll go into that with confidence in our abilities.”
AS Roma, listed by SBOBET.com with the best football odds of *2.54 to beat Juventus, also had their fair share of troubles back in their own season opener after their 1-1 draw against Hellas Verona, another one of those clubs that finished at the bottom half of the order last season. However, it seems Juventus have bigger problems on their plate because with three of their stars in Andrea Pirlo, Carlos Tevez, and Arturo Vidal having moved on to the MLS with New York City FC, the Argentine Primera Division with the Boca Juniors, and the German Bundesliga with Bayern München respectively, the Old Lady were left alone to fend off for her title on her own. Juventus will do all that they can to compensate for the absence of their three stars as they make the trip to the Stadio Olimpico to go up against their main rivals for the league championship. The only problem is, I don’t think AS Roma would be too keen on allowing Juve to get something going at their expense because after coming out on the losing end in two of the last three times that they went head-to-head, I’m pretty sure that the Giallorossi haven’t forgotten.
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*All odds shown are correct at time of writing
