Clinical Giroud lifts Milan with Juve’s off-field tribulations set to rumble on

I t should have been blood and thunder, two of Italian football’s biggest clubs squaring off on the penultimate weekend with Champions League football on the line. Juventus and Milan instead gave us dull, with blunders, in front of a listless crowd.

Significant sections of the Allianz Stadium were empty at kick-off. Fewer than 500 Milan supporters had made the short trip to Turin, others balking at the €80 ticket price in the away section. Juventus Ultras from the Curva Sud, meanwhile, were staging a protest outside against what they perceive as heavy-handed treatment from their club, including restrictions on flags, banners and instruments that can be brought into the ground.

Their eventual entrance did not lift the home team. Juventus, needing a win to stay within touching distance of fourth-placed Milan heading into the final round, only carved out a couple of half-chances before falling behind to an Olivier Giroud header in the 40th minute.

This was an isolated moment of quality in a match short of it. Timing his leap to reach Davide Calabria’s outswinger from deep on the right, Giroud met the ball by the penalty spot and directed it back across goal into the bottom corner. It was the Frenchman’s 12th strike of this Serie A campaign – one more than he managed on the way to helping his team claim the Scudetto last year.

After that came a whole lot of nothing. Juventus sent on Arkadiusz Milik and eventually Samuel Iling-Junior but none of it helped them to build a coherent attack. As La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Luigi Garlando put it in his match report, these were “11 lads in an orienteering competition, without a map or a compass”.

Milan could also have done more. Rafael Leão, anonymous for much of the game, had a