Genoa stuns Juventus, wins 2-0 despite being overrun in possession

It took Genoa just 27 minutes to turn every prediction on its head. Daniele De Rossi's side went up 2-0 on Juventus at the Luigi Ferraris, then held on for dear life the rest of the way to seal a win that had looked unlikely beforehand.

The opener came in the 11th minute: Kingsley Ehizibue finished with his right foot from inside the box, curling it into the top corner after a cross from Tommaso Baldanzi. Sixteen minutes later, Baldanzi himself got on the scoresheet, slotting home a right-footed shot from the center of the box that snuck in low, just inside the left post. Two clinical strikes turned what had been an even start, with chances at both ends early on, into a comfortable lead for the home side.

Juventus, in fact, had given a warning before the first goal: Kerim Alajbegovic and Douglas Luiz tested the keeper from outside the box in the 3rd minute, and Federico Gatti forced a save out of Justin Bijlow with a header that drifted wide of the right post, already trailing on the scoreboard. But Genoa was sharper in the final third and went into halftime up 2-0.

A Juventus side that pushed but found no reward

In the second half, Luciano Spalletti's team changed the script: Edon Zhegrova and Nick Woltemade came on, and Juventus poured forward. There were shots from Weston McKennie and Zhegrova, a header from Bremer that grazed the crossbar in the 65th minute and another attempt from him in the 86th, plus chances for Woltemade and Kalulu. The problem was the finishing: none of those shots found the net, and Genoa, with substitutes Junior Messias, Lorenzo Colombo and others, managed to protect the lead until the final whistle.

The stats tell the story of dominance without reward for the visitors: Juventus controlled the ball and generated more volume, but the scoreboard never budged.

The xG calculated after the fact based on the match's shots came out nearly even: 1.002 for Genoa versus 1.114 for Juventus, an in-house estimate that confirms the game was much closer in terms of play volume than the final score suggests. Genoa was ruthless with the little it had; Juventus kept pressing, but could not turn its dominance into goals.

What the preview said versus what happened on the field

Before the match, our projection gave Juventus a 51% chance of winning, against 20% for Genoa and a 29% chance of a draw, with expected goals of 1.5 for the visitors versus 0.87 for the home side. The result was the exact opposite of what we had forecast: the team with the lesser odds on paper came out on top with an authoritative scoreline.

With this result, Genoa moves to 10 points through 9 matches played in Serie A, while Juventus sits at 14 points through the same number of games, with 4 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses; just 4 points separate the two sides in the standings. For Spalletti's side, the loss makes clear that generating chances is not always enough when the opponent across the field makes the most of what little it gets in the box.