At the end of the night, the accolades between Juventus and Chelsea players after the full-time whistle are the only consoling (and beautiful) images emanating from the Stadio Olimpico of Turin. The Blues have won on aggregate, the Bianconeri are out of Europe.
Over-turning the 1-0 deficit from the first leg was going to be a big hurdle for Ranieri & friends to overcome; at the end of 90 minutes an insurmountable one. The match ended 2-2, with the strokes of Vincenzo Iaquinta and Alessandro Del Piero giving Juve hope twice, only to see it destroyed by the daggers of Michael Essien and Didier Drogba, two players which had been so crucially absent during Scolari’s reign.
The Bianconeri, decimated by injuries (which even last night did not fail to take their toll on the Old “rotten luck” Lady), played in true Juve spirit: with their hearts. They needed to play the perfect game, score goals without conceding any. It was not to be. Once again Chelsea (and by extent, the English Premiership) proved their superiority as a great team, concentrated in defense and cynical in attack, morally solidified by the arrival of expert tactician Guus Hiddink. One manager who, you may remember from WC 2002, already crushed Italian hearts with South Korea, and who continues the English Juve-killing trend initiated by Liverpool (2005) and Arsenal (2006).
But speaking of Hiddink, one seriously has to wonder if fate would have been kinder to Juve had Scolari still been at the Blues’ helm. We will never know. One this is for certain though: after overt two years of absence, Juventus can be proud of their return to the UEFA Champions League. “There is always next year” as they say, and the rebuilding towards European grandeur continues.
GAME OF CHESS – The wisdom of Luis Aragonés pitted against the enterprise of Guus Hiddink, or rather, Spain’s methodical school against Russia’s “mutant” one. Luis Aragones kept faith as always in his solid and fast 4-4-2 formation, which has earned the nickname of “windscreen wiper” in the Iberian peninsula (as it does away with anything in its path). Hiddink meanwhile may well be a mercenary, but when he puts his hands to the job he can certainly work miracles, and the Dutch tactician made only one unexpected change with regards to pre match predictions, preferring Ivan Saenko to Bilyaletdinov, who took his place up front beside Andrei Arshavin -Russia’s new prodigal son with a whole nation at his feet.
BALANCE – This was certainly not the same Russian side that annihilated Holland in the previous round, but Hiddink’s men did well to close their ranks and leave the opposition with limited space to exploit. Yuri Zhirkov’s tactical acumen provided Russia’s biggest threat as the fullback was given licence to push down the wing and instigate Russia’s attacks. Spain became less adventurous as the half progressed and also had a couple of close shaves. On 31 minutes, Pavlyuchenko had the Russian fans celebrating prematurely as Casillas just got a fingertip to the striker’s scorcher, only to send the ball agonisingly wide. On 34 minutes Villa picked up an injury and forced Aragonés to bring on Cesc Fabregas in replacement, and the Arsenal youngster immediately added quality to Spain’s play by positioning himself behind Torres.
DOWN WITH THE MASKS – After all the calculating and caution of the first half, the second half closed the door to such tactics: indeed, it only took 5 minutes past kick-off for Spain to open the score. Andrés Iniesta broke down the left and played in the perfect ball for Xavi, who drove an unsaveable shot past Akinfeev. 
and Saenko, but not even fresh legs were enough for Russia as Spain now controlled the game and created chance after chance, taking full advantage of a weak and scared-looking Russia.
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