On Ronaldo’s debut, the Bianconeri started fast at Chievo, lost their way in the middle but ultimately found a way to win

At last, the real thing. A month had passed since Cristiano Ronaldo touched down in Turin, placing Juventus and Serie A back at the centre of the football world’s attentions. Fans logged on in their millions just to see him walking on a treadmill at his medical, losing a game of foot-tennis in training and singing Portuguese pop at his team initiation.

His marketing impact was obvious. Now, though, it was time to find out what he had to offer on the pitch. That Ronaldo should begin with a trip to the Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi felt apt. This was where Diego Maradona began his Italian adventure, too, with a 3-1 defeat to Hellas Verona back in September 1984.

Ronaldo would face the city’s other team, Chievo. In truth, it hardly felt like an away game. Outside the stadium fans rushed the fences of the car park, trying to catch a glimpse of Ronaldo as Juventus’s team bus arrived. Inside, one banner carried the message: “Sorry my love, I won’t be at the altar. I couldn’t miss Ronaldo’s debut.”

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Tickets were sold out, yet one empty block of seats remained in the Curva Sud. Ronaldo might be a global star, but the decision by local authorities to maintain a ban on Chievo using the section that Hellas’s most ardent Ultras occupy during their own team’s home games at this shared stadium was a reminder that Italian football retains its own idiosyncratic ways.

Juventus took the lead in the third minute, Sami Khedira sweeping home at the back post after a free-kick from the right. Ronaldo had not yet touched the ball: a metaphor, perhaps, for a game that for all the novelty of his presence would wind up following a familiar script. The Bianconeri started fast, lost their way somewhere in the middle but ultimately found a way to win.

Massimiliano Allegri set his team up to attack, naming Paulo Dybala, Douglas Costa, Juan Cuadrado and Miralem Pjanic alongside Ronaldo in the starting XI – not to mention a pair of full-backs, Alex Sandro and João Cancelo, who are happiest on the front foot. If Fabrizio Pasqua had awarded either of the penalties that the latter felt he should have had at 1-0, perhaps this might have turned into a rout.

Instead things went the other way. Emmanuele Giaccherini flipped the script on his former employers – setting up Mariusz Stepinski for the equaliser before winning and converting a penalty to put Chievo 2-1 ahead.

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The champions pulled level on a Mattia Bani own goal, but still looked set to drop points until Federico Bernardeschi prodded home a winner in injury time. If Ronaldo was not familiar already with Juve’s “fino alla fine” (until the end) slogan, then here was a vivid way to complete his induction.

His own performance had been mixed. There was no goal, though he might have had at least one were it not for the efforts of Stefano Sorrentino, who dived at full stretch to palm the ball away after the Portuguese spun away from three defenders and unleashed a forceful drive towards the bottom corner midway through the second half.

Ronaldo had other shots – nine in total – yet never truly looked like scoring. At times he seemed isolated, Dybala never quite linking up in support. Only after Mario Mandzukic was introduced as a second-half substitute, taking over the centre-forward’s role and pushing Ronaldo further out towards the left-wing positions he had already been drifting to, did Juventus’s forward play start to look a little more fluid.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ronaldo is closed down by Chievo players. Photograph: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty

The five-times Ballon d’Or winner did make a different kind of impact, fracturing Sorrentino’s nose and causing him whiplash injuries during a late collision. The Chievo goalkeeper’s partner, Sara Ruggeri, would subsequently accuse Ronaldo of lacking compassion, posting a picture on Instagram of him walking away from the prone Sorrentino together with another of Nenad Tomovic tending to his teammate moments later. “A champion,” she wrote, “to be called such a thing, needs to be a HUMAN first of all!”

Ruggeri would later delete the post and Sorrentino told reporters he had accepted apologies from Ronaldo as well as other Juventus players who had messaged since the game, conveying that they did not realise in the moment how serious his injury was.

Such incidents will always be magnified where Ronaldo is involved. Even his more mundane moments are being tracked by a punctilious press, from shots on targets (four) to fouls suffered (two), chances created (six), crosses (four), and “verticalisations” (six). We know Alex Sandro was the player who passed him the ball most often (10 times) and the one who received it from him the greatest number of times (six) as well.

The press verdicts were favourable despite his failure to score. La Repubblica’s Maurizio Crosetti might have captured the mood of the coverage best when he wrote: “She does not need to kiss you on the first date, what matters on the first date is that she likes you.”

Such generosity will not last, yet the grace period may be extended by positive results. As Chievo’s manager, Lorenzo D’Anna observed with a wry smile: “The problem was that they didn’t just have Ronaldo, but the whole Juve team.”

It is a conundrum all of Serie A is familiar with, after seven consecutive Scudetti for the Old Lady. The two teams who ran them closest last season, Napoli and Roma, responded with good wins of their own. Unlike those new fans tuning into the league in the wake of Ronaldo’s arrival, they know exactly how high the bar had been set without him.

Talking points

• An impressive start for Carlo Ancelotti at Napoli, not only winning at Lazio but doing so from a goal down after Ciro Immobile took advantage of decidedly wobbly defending. It’s early to draw conclusions but Arkadiusz Milik looked in his element at the centre of a three-man attack and early indications are that the team will look to use its width in a more balanced way, with Elseid Hysaj encouraged to get forward from right-back more often than he had under Maurizio Sarri.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Napoli’s Arkadiusz Milik challenges Lazio defender Francesco Acerbi. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images

• A more unwelcome update arrives from the stands of the Stadio Olimpico.

• Three points might be more than Roma deserved against an impressive Torino, but it was a thrill to see Justin Kluivert tee up the game’s decisive late goal by picking out Edin Dzeko at the back post. An exceptional finish was still required, but the Bosnian was equal to the task.

• How troubled should Inter’s supporters be after opening with a 1-0 defeat to Sassuolo? Theirs was a desperately disappointing performance, but this team was still missing one of its most influential additions in Radja Nainggolan, while Ivan Perisic was fit only for a cameo from the bench. And Sassuolo are Inter’s bestia nera – this was their seventh win in 11 meetings.

• Almost a perfect return to the top-flight for Parma, who were 2-0 up after an hour against Udinese but allowed themselves to be pegged back to 2-2.