Juventus forward Mario Mandzukic was lauded by Massimiliano Allegri after his eighth Serie A goal of the season. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri labelled Mario Mandzukic “extraordinary” after the forward struck again against Roma on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mandzukic’s first-half goal was enough for Juve to claim a 1-0 win, marking their 16th victory in 17 Serie A games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Croatian has now scored in his last three home games for Juve, and in total has netted six goals in front of the Bianconeri faithful in 2018-19 – both personal season bests.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He also broke his duck against Roma, against whom he had never previously scored in the teams’ Serie A bouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Croatian is already up to eight league goals for Juve this season \u2013 bettering his previous two campaigns \u2013 and Allegri hailed the forward. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“Mario is a key player. His combination of technical and physical attributes make him an extraordinary player,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Allegri also praised Paulo Dybala after Juve retained an eight-point lead atop the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Paulo fared well too. He allowed us to bring the ball out of our half,” he said.<\/p>\n
The result put further pressure on Roma coach Eusebio Di Francesco, whose team slipped to 10th in the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Di Francesco was pleased with the way his team finished the game, although he rued their first half.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“In the first 45 minutes we saw the same fear and insecurity of recent games, but after the break we overcame that,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We battled with determination and used the ball a lot better.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The result keeps the Juve eight points clear of Napoli, who beat SPAL 1-0, at the top, while Roma languish in 10th place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the win saw Juventus set a couple of records along the way, including matching the best start for any team in the top five European leagues. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll have a chance to improve that record before the close of the year with two matches still on tap. \u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll play Atalanta on Boxing Day before closing out their 2018 schedule with a clash against Sampdoria on Decemeber 29.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Juventus forward Mario Mandzukic was lauded by Massimiliano Allegri after his eighth Serie A goal of the season. Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri labelled Mario Mandzukic “extraordinary” after the forward struck again against Roma on Saturday.\u00a0 Mandzukic’s first-half goal was enough for Juve to claim a 1-0 win, marking their 16th victory in 17 Serie A…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}