Cristiano Ronaldo was brought to Turin to help get Juventus over the line in the Champions League. The club will need their forward to be at his very best against Atletico Madrid in midweek if they are to stay in the competition.
Juventus is focused on converting their loss to win to enable them qualify for the next round as Manchester United did to PSG.
Juventus, who are on the verge of securing an eighth straight Scudetto, head into Tuesday night’s last-16 tie looking to become one of the few sides in Champions League knockout history to overturn a 2-0 first-leg deficit.
Make no mistake about it, though, the pressure is well and truly on Ronaldo to deliver against Atleti, with Monday’s Corriere dello Sport pointing out: “He wasn’t signed to win the Scudetto or to boost merchandising. Juve are waiting to end years of disappointments.”
And yet Ronaldo, the competition’s leading scorer with 121 goals to his name in just 159 matches, heads into this game having scored just once in Europe’s premier club competition this season.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese was also largely shackled in Juventus’ first-leg defeat in Madrid, with Diego Simeone’s side reducing him to one early long-range free-kick that Jan Oblak tipped over, before he inadvertently deflected Diego Godin’s shot in for the hosts’ second.
So, Mr Champions League will need to turn the clock back if he wants to both get his hands on the cup with the big ears for a fourth straight year and his new team out of this hole.
Massimiliano Allegri and Co have been here before, however, this time last year to be precise after being written off following a 2-2 home draw with Tottenham at the same stage of the competition.
Then, the Juve head coach – who guided the club to the finals of this competition in 2015 and 2017 – berated journalists for writing his players off.
“People must realise that winning is not normality, it is extraordinary,” he raged, thumping the table, after the first leg in a scene caught in the documentary ‘First Team: Juventus’.
“I will not accept that tonight’s 2-2 draw could depress the Juve fans. There are some scary ups and downs in the mood here.
“This really irritates me, because people have no idea of how teams function. It was always 50-50 with Tottenham and it still is.”
The Italians, of course, went on to prevail at Wembley, before almost pulling off an even more remarkable comeback in their quarter-final showdown with Ronaldo’s Madrid.