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Juventus beat Napoli 1-0 and neutralised the threat of Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen and here is exactly how the 'Old Lady' did it.
Juventus have climbed up to the summit of Serie A once again thanks to a narrow 1-0 home win against defending champions Napoli.
Federico Gatti's goal in the 51dt minute was the decisive moment in the game for Juventus who protected their lead well by defending very well against Victor Osimhen and Napoli.
Osimhen has now failed to score in his last seven games for Napoli even though he did find the net in this match, it was ruled out for an offside call.
That was the only real crack at goal for the Nigerian as Juventus controlled him pretty well for the entire 90 minutes and here are three techniques they used to shut down Osimhen.
3 tactics Juventus used to keep Osimhen quiet
Juventus isolated Osimhen
Juventus did a great job of isolating Osimhen throughout the match, keeping him away from his teammates with good pressing in midfield.
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The Nigerian striker only had 22 touches in the entire 90 minutes which was due to the great defensive work by Juventus with an intentional approach to limit his influence on the game.
And this was despite the fact that Napoli had 66% of the ball, Juventus made sure the majority of their opponent's possession did not get to the danger-man.
It also didn't help that Osimhen's teammates did not do enough to try to find him with passes, playing into the recent allegations that they have been intentionally starving him of passes.
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Victor Osimhen: 3 likely reasons why Napoli players are allegedly refusing to pass the ball to the Super Eagles striker
Fans are speculating that Napoli players are intentionally starving Super Eagles striker Victor Osimhen of service and here are the likely reasons they aren't passing to him
Juventus forced Osimhen wide
The few times Osimhen did get the ball, Juventus made sure to force him wide instead of the central areas where he could cause real damage.
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His heat map in the game proves this to be true as Osimhen spent the majority of his time with the ball in wide areas and even had his best moment in the game from the wing.
Osimhen was forced wide right when chasing down a pass and was intelligent enough to create the best chance of the game which was squandered by Kvicha Kvaratskhelia.
Juventus stopped Osimhen from winning duels
A closer look at Osimhen's stats reveals that he uncharacteristically lost a lot of duels and that is because Juventus defenders made sure to close up on him as soon as possible.
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Osimhen only won three out of his eight ground duels and five out of his nine aerial duels which was down to the great work of Juventus defenders Federico Gatti and Bremer.
The 24-year-old striker was forced to attempt to dribble to find some space but failed at that too as he didn't complete a single one of his attempted dribbles.
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