Winners and losers: Juventus looking a force to fear, exceptional Hart, Toure’s travails

You would have been forgiven for thinking that Antonio Conte’s decision to leave Juventus in the summer would constitute the beginning of the end of their current dominance of Italian football. Certainly, his were big shoes to fill; under their former captain, the Old Lady secured a hat-trick of Serie A titles for the first time since the 1930s and generally made being really bloody good look like a walk in the park.

The arrival of Massimiliano Allegri did little to assuage the concerns of Juve fans. For the latter, replacing the talismanic Conte with a man who never truly convinced at AC Milan (despite winning the league in 2010/11) was akin to throwing out the family china in favour of paper plates.

Yet there are signs that Allegri could go on to trump his predecessor’s achievements, in Europe at least. After a tentative set of performances in the group stage, Juve took apart Borussia Dortmund in the round of 16, building on a slender first-leg advantage with a 3-0 evisceration at Westfalenstadion.

It felt like a coming of age for a side that has often flattered to deceive on the continent since their 90s pomp. No one embodied that feeling more than Carlos Tevez, whose brace took his tally in this season’s competition to six. With the Argentine in such deadly form, Juve will be a force to fear in the quarter-finals.

I know, I know. But let’s just take a quick moment to appreciate Messi’s unofficial one-man campaign for the creation of Global Nutmeg Day, to be celebrated every March 18th henceforth.

Plus he would have scored about 17 goals were it not for…

It is the British way to be blasé to the point of iciness about our best players, so it was pleasing to see Joe Hart garner rave reviews for his goalkeeping display at the Camp Nou, even as Manchester City limped out of the tournament.

Left to face the massed ranks of the Barca attack almost single-handedly, the 27-year-old was magnificent, denying Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez time and time again. And the variety of his contributions was every bit as impressive as their number: there were diving stops and sturdy blocks; last-ditch interventions and preventative measures.

“I wanted it to count,” he sighed after the game, and it might have if a couple of his team-mates had bothered turning up. As it was, Hart was destined to produce one of the season’s great in-vain performances.

At times, Arsenal fans must wish that their failures were not always quite so gentle. The Gunners slipped into the warm embrace of European semi-failure for the umpteenth successive season on Tuesday night, turning in a gallant display to win in Monaco but coming up short on away goals.

It would have been heartbreaking were it not so completely predictable. There was the early(ish) goal to get the show on the road... the subsequent lull during which the momentum appeared to have drained away... a second goal to inspire wild fever dreams of Great European Recoveries... the brave onslaught... and the final whistle with its attendant sighs.

Like the Gunners' short-lived second-leg fightbacks against Bayern Munich in 2013 and 2014, it was a performance to ward off any feeling of impending doom at the Emirates. Arsene Wenger insisted that there had been "lots of positives". Olivier Giroud claimed, with scant regard for the mathematics of the thing, that Arsenal had played "the perfect match".

This, really, is the issue for Arsenal. While a 6-0 aggregate thumping could prompt the kind of soul-searching that might lead to actual improvement, a heartwarming success brings acceptance and prolongs the status quo.

If finishing fourth in the league and reaching the last 16 of the Champions League is the aim, that's fine. But for supporters who thirst after more, something altogether more violent might have proven more productive in the long term.

Imagine you're really good at football. You're a professional, let's say. Now imagine you were good at free-kicks. Like, really, stupidly good at free-kicks. Score-from-40-yards-like-it’s-no-big-thing good at free-kicks. YouTube-superstar good.

Now imagine you had to take a version of a free-kick but from only 12 yards out and with no wall. Then imagine taking a penalty as horrendous as Hakan Calhanoglu's against Atletico and laugh/cry/emote in any way you see fit until you pass out.

When he’s good, he’s really, really good, but Yaya Toure was horrid on Wednesday. Given their opponents’ attacking options, Manuel Pellegrini needed his central midfielders to put a shift in first and foremost, but Toure seemed happy to let Fernandinho do his share of the work while he ambled about ten yards further forward than he should have been.

That would have been just about excusable had the Ivorian clicked into Runaway Train mode, but with his forays coming to nought it was little surprise to see him substituted long before the final whistle. You wonder how many more chances he will have to conquer Europe in a light blue shirt.