Pretoria 2 - 3 Juventus (392976359)

Fairly good weather for football had drawn a crowd of 308 to Pretoria. Jesper Schneider was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Herculano Veiga Paz and Sacha Moerenhout. A 3-5-2 alignment was the formation of choice for Pretoria. They fielded: Koronowski - Ziemski, Sapieha, Mierzyński - Kopecki, Stań, Murtinger, Sobkiewicz, Topos - Zadurny, Wojcieszak.

Juventus decided to use a 4-5-1 set up. Lineup: Josanu - Kuronen, Germanà, Gould, Sankevitz - Fountas, Monhait, Kjellen, Geisler, Merreot - Gay.

It was an obvious ambition of Pretoria to use their ability at attacking on the flanks. Juventus were relying on their ability to counter-attack. Juventus's O. Sankevitz could have put the guests one up after 7 minutes after chasing a through ball from the right, but E. Koronowski was as fast as a snake, grabbing the ball from under his nose. After 23 minutes of play, M. Wojcieszak gave the home team a 1 - 0 lead after an attack coming in from the right. The referee showed Juventus's K. Kuronen the yellow card after a particularly nasty challenge. The unexpected cross pass from Pretoria's K. Topos after 33 minutes opened up the defence and was received by B. Zadurny who finished off for 2 - 0. After this, you could see that the players of Pretoria were more interested in killing time than scoring more goals. 39 minutes into the game, Pretoria seemed to suffer a certain amount of confusion and they fell to a inadequate level of organisation. P. Sobkiewicz of Pretoria received a yellow card after 40 minutes for unsportsmanlike behaviour. With 41 minutes showing on the scoreboard clock, Juventus showed some good skill and were able to reduce the score to 2 - 1 when D. Merreot got past the home side's central defenders right in front of the goal. A late sliding challenge from K. Kuronen was deemed to be his second yellow card offence by the referee, resulting in him being sent off, and Juventus left a man down. With 44 minutes played, Pretoria's K. Topos almost extended the lead, but his shot from the left glanced off the top of the bar to fall behind the net. 2 - 1 was the score after the first half. Possession in this half belonged to Pretoria, who controlled the ball 53 percent of the time.

The coach gave his players an extra tactical briefing during the break, and after that Pretoria had solid organisation. Juventus's right side looked dangerous 69 minutes in, but E. Koronowski made a good save on C. Fountas's hard shot to the top corner. Pretoria were determined to attack on the wing and their central attempts were constantly abandoned in favour of the wings. 74 minutes in, Pretoria appeared unsure on how to play and their organisation was only inadequate. The crowd was silenced 79 minutes into the match as the visiting team's D. Merreot came in from the left, levelling the score to 2 - 2. R. Sapieha behaved like an inexperienced youth player after 80 minutes as he gave the ball away to D. Gay. Lucky for him though, there was no goal. After 87 minutes, Juventus sent a free kick in high over the penalty box. In what looked like a well-rehearsed move, the ball was headed backwards and reached G. Germanà, who had plenty of space to place a well aimed shot - 2 - 3. Possession in the forty-five minutes was dominated by Juventus, with 52 percent of the ball.

Pretoria's top performer was clearly B. Zadurny. However, E. Koronowski made a disastrous appearance. Juventus's best player was D. Merreot. D. Josanu was a disappointment, however. The match ends 2 - 3.