Juventus moved into second place in Italy’s Serie A with a 4-1 win over Genoa on Thursday at Turin’s Stadio Olimpico.
Claudio Ranieri’s team are now level on 24 points with Inter, but have a worse goal difference and have played one match more.
Two first-half goals made the difference, the first from defender Zoltan Grygera and a second from Amauri, his sixth league goal of the season.
There was a disappointing showing from Genoa’s Diego Milito. The Argentine striker is Serie A’s leading scorer with nine, but was unable to escape from Juventus and Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini.
Genoa had been completely nullified by the time Juventus scored their third. Alessandro Del Piero flicked the ball over the defense and substitute Vincenzo Iaquinta used to his pace to race away and slot the ball past Rubinho.
However, there was still time for Milito to move into double figures by firing in a late penalty after Nicola Legrottalie was penalized for handball.
There was more good news for Ranieri with the return to action of midfielder Mauro Camoranesi. It was from his cross that Sokratis Papastathopoulos turned the ball into his own net for the home team’s fourth.
For coach Ranieri the return of Camoranesi was very pleasing, though he said he felt that it showed Juventus’ strength in depth.
He told Sky Italia; “I like to make everyone feel that they are part of Juventus. Everyone prepares the same way and on the pitch you are with your teammates and everyone wants to do well.”
“I played a lot of the big names early on in the Champions League preliminaries, but to play matches every two or three days, in the league or the Champions League, you need to revolve your players,” Ranieri said.
It didn’t take Juventus long to take the lead, when Grygera found the net from the right of the penalty area, after being teed up by Del Piero.
On 25 mintues Amauri made it two when he rose above the defense to head home Marco Marchionni’s first time cross, not long after Milito had wasted Genoa’s best chance of the night.
Juventus now have to wait and watch how Inter get on away to Palermo and Amauri, who joined Juventus from the Sicilian team, is hoping his old club does his new one a favor.
“If we play like this we can put lots of teams in trouble. We have to hope that Palermo play well and I’ll be asking my old teammates to do us a favor,” he said.
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