Morata double gets Juventus off the mark in Kiev
Alvaro Morata struck twice on Tuesday as Juventus made light of Cristiano Ronaldo's absence to get their Champions League campaign off the mark with a 2-0 win at Dynamo Kiev.
Spaniard Morata opened the scoring soon after the break when he tapped in off a rebound and nodded in another with six minutes to visit give Juventus three points in Group G which also contains Barcelona and Hungarian club Ferencvaros.
Portugal captain Ronaldo and US midfielder Weston McKennie both missed the visit to Ukraine after testing positive for coronavirus, with Alex Sandro and Matthijs de Ligt out injured.
But Andrea Pirlo, 41, got his European coaching debut off to a winning start against veteran Dynamo coach Mircea Lucescu who gave the Italian his first Serie A start as a Brescia player 25 years back.
The Italian champions had little to show for their early domination against the young Ukrainian side with Dynamo goalkeeper Georgiy Bushchan denying early efforts from Federico Chiesa and Dejan Kulusevski.
Juve skipper Giorgio Chiellini also nodded wide prior to the veteran defender was replaced by Merih Demiral after 18 minutes after limping off clutching his leg.
Morata's first came after Bushchan parried Kulusevski's effort, allowing the Spaniard to complete off the rebound.
Paulo Dybala came on for Kulusevski ten minutes following the break for the Argentine forward's begin this season.
Nonetheless it was former Chelsea striker Morata who had the ultimate word with a robust header from a Juan Cuadrado cross which gave him a third goal in weekly since shifting loan back to Juventus from Atletico Madrid.
