Staff Reporter.
Beneveto dented Juventus’ Serie A title hopes on Sunday as Adolfo Gaich’s second-half strike sealed a shock 1-0 victory in Turin and ended the relegation battlers’ 11-match winless run.
Gaich pounced on a careless pass from Juve midfielder Arthur to fire in the decisive goal after 69 minutes, and the hosts failed to find a way past goalkeeper Lorenzo Montipo.
The defeat left champions Juve in third place, 10 points behind leaders Inter Milan with 11 games remaining.
Benevento’s survival hopes were boosted as they moved seven points clear of the relegation zone in 16th position.
Andrea Pirlo’s Juve were unbeaten in their previous five league games but he could not prevail over his former AC Milan teammate Filippo Inzaghi in the opposing dugout, despite the hosts mustering nine shots on target to Benevento’s one.
Juve started on the front foot as Cristiano Ronaldo flashed a shot wide and Montipo denied Alvaro Morata with a diving save.
The referee awarded Juve a penalty for handball but overturned the decision following a VAR review, and Ronaldo found the net only to be denied by the offside flag.
Ronaldo, who scored a hat trick against Cagliari in his last game, was hungry for a goal and stung Montipo’s palms before volleying an effort narrowly wide on the turn.
But a catastrophic mistake from Arthur gifted the patient visitors the lead, as his slack pass across his own penalty box was intercepted by Gaich, who finished into the bottom corner.
Ronaldo was Juve’s biggest threat as they pushed for a late equaliser, but he could not beat Montipo. The goalkeeper stuck out a leg to deny one effort before parrying another which fell into the path of Danilo but the defender blasted the rebound over.
Meanwhile Juventus awarded Ronaldo a special shirt hailing him as the greatest player of all time and celebrating his latest goal landmark.
Andrea Agnelli, president of the Italian champions, presented the 36-year-old Portuguese with a shirt featuring the number 770 – his career goal tally – and “G.O.A.T” which stands for “greatest of all time”.
Ronaldo overtook Brazilian great Pele’s all-time scoring record of 767 goals on 15 March when he netted a hat-trick against Cagliari.
Meanwhile in Florence, Zlatan Ibrahimovic returned to the starting line-up for Milan for the first time in over three weeks and scored after nine minutes following Simon Kjaer’s ball over the top.
But Milan needed Brahim Diaz’s 57th-minute strike and a Hakan Calhanoglu winner with quarter of an hour to go to snatch victory.
A curling Erick Pulgar free-kick had pulled Fiorentina level with Franck Ribery then putting the hosts ahead six minutes after the break.
“It was very important to win like this after the defeat against Manchester United,” said Ibrahimovic, who at 39 became the oldest player to score 15 goals in a single Serie A season.