Cristiano Ronaldo executed two penalties late in his 100th match with Juventus in all competitions,
to lead the Italian Serie A champions to a 3-1 win over Genoa on Sunday.
Ronaldo, who scored twice from two penalties in the 3-0 victory over Barcelona on Tuesday,
fired the kicks in the 78th and 89th minutes, bringing his tally to ten league goals this season,
the sum of what Genoa scored.
Ronaldo has scored 14 goals for Juventus in all competitions this season.
Juventus, seeking a tenth successive league title, have 23 points from 11 games in fourth place,
and have maintained their unbeaten record, but have tied on five occasions.
Genoa, who narrowly escaped relegation last season, are penultimate with six points.
Juventus had 71 percent possession of the ball but, not for the first time, Andrea Pirlo’s side struggled
to open spaces in the defense of their stubborn opponent.
Pirlo said, “We have to take the Barcelona match out of our minds. We knew that we were facing
a team that wanted to close spaces so we had to be patient. The most important thing is our style,
we couldn’t wait (Genoa) but we had to attack it.”
It took the defending champions 57 minutes to clinch the lead when Weston McKinney passed
the ball to Paulo Dybala and the Argentine fired past Mattia Beren, scoring his first league goal of the season.
Four minutes later, Stefano Storaro equalized his old club’s goal with a shot past Vojciech Chesney
after Luca Pellegrini’s cross pass.
The referee canceled a goal for Dybala for offside and Ronaldo headed a ball in Perrin’s hand before
Juventus overtook Genoa.
Twelve minutes before the end, Juan Cuadrado fell after a foolish intervention from Niccolo Rovella
and Ronaldo hit the penalty spot in the middle of the goal.
Juventus got another penalty kick after Perrin interfered with Alvaro Morata after Genoa lost
the ball and Ronaldo hit the roof of the goal.
Pirlo said: “It is annoying that our goal was shaken by Genoa’s first shot on goal, especially after
a few minutes of our progress, but we recovered from that.”
He added, “Dybala needed the goal to remove the burden, mentally and physically. We were waiting
for this and now we are expecting more of it.”
