In the first leg of UCL 2016/17 quarterfinal, hosts Juventus beat Barcelona by 3-0 with the help of Paulo Dybala’s double and a header from Giorgio Chiellini.
Dybala (7’ and 22’) scored a brace in the first half as the hosts took a 2-0 lead over the visitors at the end of the first half. In the second half, the Italian side extended their lead with a Chiellini’s header (55’). With this 3-0 home victory. Juventus are now favourites to enter the semifinal of the current UCL season.
The hosts had a good chance to open their scoreline in very early minutes. On just 3 minutes, Higuain’s header; following a set piece found the visitors’ goalkeeper (Marc-Andre Ter Stegen) who couldn’t catch the ball perfectly at the first attempt. However, the ball didn’t go far away from the German who managed to secure that in the next attempt.
On 7 minutes, Dybala opened the scoreline for Juventus. Cuadrado made a pass to unmarked Dybala who next turned back towards the goal and made a superb finish at the bottom left corner.
Later, Barcelona had a great opportunity to equalise the scoreline on 21 minutes. Messi played a good ball for Iniesta who drove that towards the goal but Buffon was timely able to push that ball outside the box.
In the very next minute, Juventus made 2-0 through a counter-attack. Mandzukic put a good ball for Dybala who hit that at the low left corner to successfully beat Ter Stegen.
On 30 minutes, Messi’s successful finish was disallowed due to a previous offside decision where Suarez was guilty just before the Messi’s goal.
In the first half, Barcelona dominated the ball position but they were not able to score their opener at least.
From the beginning of the second half, the visitors generated more attacking football which helped them to create several chances for the goal but the Catalunya team failed to succeed on it.
On 55 minutes, Chiellini scored the third goal for the hosts. Beating the marker Mascherano, Chiellini succeeded to make a header following a corner which entered to the goal.
Thereafter, Barcelona tried hard to score at least one away goal but Juventus players denied that.
On the next 19th April, Barcelona will re-meet against the Italian side in the return leg at Camp Nou (Barcelona). Surely, Barcelona will need another magic efforts like their last home game in UCL against PSG to secure their semifinal spot in this competition.
On the other hand, another quarterfinal match of the tournament between the hosts Borussia Dortmund and AS Monaco was postponed due to a security concern.
Dortmund’s team bus was involved in an explosion during travelling towards the stadium. Luckily, there were no serious injuries apart from Marc Bartra who has been hospitalised due to breaking a bone in his wrist. The match is rescheduled on Wednesday (12/04/2017) at 18:45 local time (22:15 IST).