Cristiano Ronaldo of Juventus evades challenge from Gianluca Mancini of AS Roma during the Serie A match between Juventus and AS Roma at Allianz Stadium on February 6, 2021 in Turin, Italy.
Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 23rd goal of the season and his third this week as clinical Juventus leapfrogged Roma into third with victory over Paulo Fonseca’s side.
A day removed from celebrating his 36th birthday, the Portuguese continues to belie his age with another supreme performance. He opened the scoring to give Juve the lead in the 13th-minute with a precision left-footed strike from the edge of the box, and a short while later was denied a first-half brace by the crossbar.
Roma enjoyed the lion’s share of possession in the opening 45 minutes, and although Juve had to absorb a lot of pressure, goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny didn’t have a save to make.
It was more of the same from the visitors after the restart, although the introduction of out-of-favour striker Edin Dzeko gave Roma more impetus, without reward.
FT | ⏱ | ONE CLEAN SHEET 🚫, TWO GOALS ⚽️⚽️ & 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗘𝗘 𝗕𝗜𝗚 𝗣𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗦!!! 👌👌👌#JuveRoma #FinoAllaFine #ForzaJuve pic.twitter.com/xd35RlhDCy
— JuventusFC (@juventusfcen) February 6, 2021
And with 20 minutes remaining, Juventus sealed the points. Substitute Dejan Kulusevski raced down the right and rolled a ball across the face of goal, searching for Ronaldo but inadvertently bundled over the line by defender Roger Ibanez for an unfortunate own-goal.
Juventus, clicking into gear as the business end of the season approaches, climb above Roma into third, closing the gap on leaders Inter to five points having played a game less.
