Juventus in control, but wary of another Barcelona backlash

Juventus 3 Barcelona 0

Barcelona are determined not to make life easy for themselves in the Champions League this season after two goals from Paulo Dybala put Juventus firmly in control of their quarter-final tie. But the Italians will be wary of looking too far forward bearing in mind what happened last month when the Spanish side met Paris Saint-Germain.

In that last 16 clash, Barcelona were thrashed 4-0 in Paris in the first leg but then clawed back the deficit three weeks later at the Camp Nou by beating the French side 6-1 in one of the most extraordinary nights in European football history.

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Can they pull off a similarly stirring comeback in the quarter-final second leg in Barcelona next Wednesday? The odds are surely against it.

This is clearly a Barcelona side on the wane and well though they played against PSG, they were helped by some inept defending. The Italian champions are unlikely to be as generous as their French counterparts in gifting goals and should be able to cope with the inevitable backlash.

Describing the result as a "nightmare", Barcelona coach Luis Enrique said: "We put in a really bad first half. In the second half we were even the better team but we conceded the third."

Rather than blame his players for another underwhelming performance, Enrique said if anyone deserved to be fingered for the defeat, then it was him. "A coach does everything to help the team and prepare them, but evidently I did not," he said. "We have to improve, learn from these mistakes, analyse the game carefully and realise where we went wrong."

It went wrong early on in Turin with Dybala putting the hosts one up on seven minutes with a sweetly-taken goal, curling the ball past Marc-Andre ter Stegen from a tight angle. The Argentine repeated the trick on 22 minutes and Giorgio Chiellini made it 3-0 after the break with a strong header from a corner.

It could have been worse for Barcelona had Ter Stegen not saved well on two occasions from Gonzalo Higuain, and officials not disallowed a goal from Juan Cuadrado that television replays showed to be good.

Nonetheless, the Italians will travel to the second leg in confident mood, boasting as they do the second-best defence of any club in Europe's top-five leagues and having racked up 441 Champions League minutes without conceding a goal.

"It's the second time this has happened," reflected Luis Enrique. "It's hard to think of a remuntada [comeback], but we'll try to get back on our feet and put in a good performance in the second leg."

The job of Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri between now and next week is to ensure that his squad appreciate that the job is only half done. Hailing the victory as "the greatest result of my three years here", Allegri nonetheless cautioned his players about getting too carried away: "It is the first step towards the semi-final, but the second leg will be a different matter.

"I cannot say what percentage our chances of progressing are. In Barcelona we are going to have aim to score goals."