Juventus is powerless without Ronaldo; Chiesa makes her debut with...

Juventus lost points on Saturday without the corona-infected Cristiano Ronaldo on a visit to PhD candidate Crotone: 1-1. The men of trainer Andrea Pirlo certainly did not play great without his star player, but were unlucky that a goal by Álvaro Morata was rejected in the final phase for narrowly offside. Federico Chiesa was sent off with a red card on his debut for Juventus. At Crotone, Ajax-mercenary Lisandro Magallán played the entire match, as has been the case all season.

After twelve minutes, Juventus faced a backlog. Leonardo Bonucci came just too late trying to intercept the ball from Arkadiusz Reca, after which Crotone was awarded a penalty. That job was completed by Simy, last season’s top scorer in Serie B: 1-0. Juventus did not need long to recover from that, as Morata equalized nine minutes later. The Spanish striker was perfectly played at the far post by Chiesa and could slide the ball in: 1-1. It was Morata’s first goal for Juve since his return to the club.

Juventus had a nice chance just before half time in the person of the broken Manolo Portanova, who was stopped by the quickly released goalkeeper Alex Cordaz. On the other side of the field, Crotone immediately became dangerous, where Salvatore Molina hit the post. Fifteen minutes after the break, Juventus had to continue with ten men, because Chiesa was sent off the field. The right half played the ball too far ahead and hit opponent Luca Cigarini hard on the leg, in an attempt to correct that.

Even with ten men, Juventus retained confidence in a result. Morata headed from a free kick by Dejan Kulusevski to the post. Moments later, the center forward thought to give the visitors the lead by tapping in a low cross from Juan Cuadrado. After minutes of deliberation, however, the VAR decided it was offside, so the hit did not count.