Two games, zero goals. Cristiano Ronaldo couldn\u2019t even score from four meters (yards) on Saturday. The Juventus forward was, however, able to offer a wry smile at his misfortune as he threw his hands up in the air. Ronaldo seemed certain to open his Serie A account in the 75th minute of the 2-0 victory against Lazio. Joao Cancelo rolled the ball across to his Portuguese compatriot but goalkeeper Thomas Strakosha did just enough to stop him from tapping in from four meters, instead it ricocheted off Ronaldo\u2019s feet and fell to Mario Mandzukic to score into an empty net.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is not angry at all, he smiled because these things happen,\u201d Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri said. Just as it was on Ronaldo\u2019s debut last week, when Juventus won 3-2 at Chievo Verona, it was down to his teammates to fire the Bianconeri to victory, with Miralem Pjanic also netting as the seven-time defending champions downed Lazio.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo is finding life in Serie A harder than he might have expected. \u201cIt\u2019s only two weeks that he\u2019s with us,\u201d Allegri said. \u201cHe\u2019s intelligent and understands that Italian football is different to that in Spain. Today he played well also in defense, everyone is waiting for his first goal. I\u2019m happy with how he\u2019s fitting in, he is a very humble lad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ronaldo left Real Madrid in the offseason in a Serie A record 112 million euro deal, but has yet to fully adapt to Italian football. His teammates aren\u2019t too concerned.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is the best player in the world. For us it is something exceptional, we are very happy to play with him,\u201d Juventus midfielder Blaise Matuidi said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to help him score goals because it is in his DNA.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that if he scores goals it will help us win more matches. Of course we will learn from his game. Juventus is another culture. For him, for us, to understand his game. He is someone who goes forward very quickly, who is very mobile, we need to understand each other better. We will improve in that sense and I know he will score an enormous amount of goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ronaldo scored in Turin in three previous visits with Madrid, including a spectacular overhead kick which earned him a standing ovation from the Juventus fans last year.<\/p>\n
Those same supporters were anxious for Ronaldo to find the target on his home debut on Saturday, and there was an air of nervous expectation around the Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n
He was largely anonymous in the first half and had only one touch in the opposition box. The closest he came to scoring was when his hand appeared to brush Federico Bernardeschi\u2019s attempt, which was palmed away by Strakosha.<\/p>\n
Pjanic gave Juventus the lead, shortly after Sami Khedira had hit the post, with a 20-meter volley into the bottom corner on the half hour. The 33-year-old Ronaldo did better in the second half. He almost laid on a second goal with a series of stepovers on the left of the penalty area before putting in a cross that Mandzukic somehow ballooned over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two games, zero goals. Cristiano Ronaldo couldn\u2019t even score from four meters (yards) on Saturday. The Juventus forward was, however, able to offer a wry smile at his misfortune as he threw his hands up in the air. Ronaldo seemed certain to open his Serie A account in the 75th minute of the 2-0 victory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40253,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40251\/revisions\/40253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}