Juventus stayed one point clear of Inter at the top of Serie A with a comeback win at Atalanta today. They were made to work hard for it though, and once against pulled out 3 points from a game in which they did not play well.
Atalanta missed a penalty in the first half but still had the lead going into the final 20 minutes. That was when Gonzalo Higuain struck twice and then Paulo Dybala finished the game as a contest in injury time. This was not the result of dominant pressure finally telling, as we can see from the Running xG plot below. Atalanta had almost as much xG as Juventus after it went 1-0, but Juventus made their chances count.
The Win Percentage plot below shows that 2/3 of our 10,000 simulations of today’s shots had Atalanta winning, which would have taken them above Cagliari and Lazio and into 3rd place.
The Juventus and Inter title race is beginning to look like last season’s Premier League where Manchester City and Liverpool traded wins the entire year before Manchester City just pipped Liverpool to the line. 13 games in and Juventus have only dropped 4 points, with Inter only having dropped 5. We might be in for a title race for the ages in Italy this year!
Becker Sports Graphics 