Having already secured a place in the top 12, United’s aim was to break into the top four or ensure they had a seeded draw for the two-legged play-offs, which would give them a home tie first.<\/p>\n
They had disappointed against eight-time champions Lyon a week before, losing 3-0, and had to come from three goals down to draw 3-3 with Tottenham in the Women’s Super League last Sunday.<\/p>\n
It was clear United were keen to avoid similar trouble this time around and were quick out of the blocks, winning several set-pieces before Park’s excellent strike bent into the top right corner.<\/p>\n
Skinner’s side played with the intensity necessary against Juventus, who had started the evening in third place in the table.<\/p>\n
At the heart of it was England international Park \u2013 a summer signing from Manchester City with prior Champions League experience \u2013 and she was a constant threat for Juventus’ backline.<\/p>\n
She had several shots that were deflected wide and a breakaway which she couldn’t take advantage of in the first half, but played her role well before coming off in the 72nd minute.<\/p>\n
Dominique Janssen was also a solid replacement at right-back for the injured Jayde Riviere and was not afraid to push up when United were on the attack.<\/p>\n
Overall, it was a pleasing display to end a busy period for Skinner, who has had to rotate his small squad, to which he hopes to add depth in January’s transfer window.<\/p>\n
United have achieved their ambitions of reaching the next phase in their debut season of the competition and in Skinner’s words, anything else is “a bonus”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having already secured a place in the top 12, United’s aim was to break into the top four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-355036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}