Juventus restore 8 point cushion

Milan, April 15: Spanish striker Fernando Llorente scored his third goal in two games as Juventus restored their eightpoint lead over Roma at the top of Italy’s Serie A with a comfortable 2-0 win away to Udinese on Monday.

 

Roma kept their slim hopes of a first scudetto since 2001 alive with a 3-1 win at home to Atalanta on Saturday which reduced the gap to five points.  But any thoughts Antonio Conte’s men, beaten 2-0 away at Napoli two weeks ago, would suffer a slip up at the Friuli Stadium were quashed inside the first half hour of a largely one sided contest.

 

Sebastian Giovinco opened the scoring on 16 minutes, with Llorente adding a second 10 minutes later to leave a hapless Udinese with a mountain to climb at a near empty stadium.

Conte was full of praise for his team. “In this kind of fixture we could have dropped points here. Udinese let you control things, then hit you on the counter attack. But I think we got it right in terms of attitude, focus and application,” he said. With striker Carlos Tevez struggling with adductor problems, Conte rested him in anticipation of a testing run in in which Juve face Benfica in the Europa League semis.