Gonzalo Higuain brace as Juventus warm up for Barca

MILAN: Gonzalo Higuain hit his second brace in as many games as Paulo Dybalainspired Juventus warmed up for their midweek Champions League clash against Barcelona with a shaky 2-0 win over Chievo. Juve’s 25th win of the campaign took the Turin giants, chasing a record sixth consecutive scudetto, nine points clear of Roma, who face Bologna on Sunday looking to tighten their grip on second spot. Juve are also set to meet Lazio in the Italian Cup final after a 5-4 semi-final aggregate win over Napoli in midweek, when Argentina striker Higuain scored twice in a 3-2 second leg loss at the San Paolo stadium. But despite seeing Dybala deliver an inspiring performance against Chievo, coach Massimiliano Allegri will be expecting improvements on Tuesday when Juve host Barcelona for the first time since losing the 2015 final to the La Liga giants in Berlin.

Nevertheless, it was a defiant Allegri who fired a preemptive strike at eventual critics looking for more of the beautiful game from the Italian giants when he told Premium Sport: “It makes me laugh when I read about ‘spectacular football’. That’s okay for the circus, but our job is to go out and win. “I have really good players, and it’s not about entertaining. There are dirty games sometimes, not all games are the same. But we still have to go out and win them.” Gianluigi Buffon’s 616th appearance in Serie A meant the Juve ‘keeper overtook retired Inter Milan great Javier Zanetti (615), although he remains behind Paolo Maldini’s impressive tally of 647 games. Although he had little to do in a first half that saw Higuain fire past Andrea Seculin from Dybala’s smart cutback on 23 minutes, Chievo kept Juve running throughout.