Winger Mbangula forced home his first goal in Europe’s elite club competition eight minutes from the end at the Allianz Stadium to give Juve a lead to take to next week’s second leg of their play-off tie with PSV.
The 21-year-old saved Juve from being stung by Ivan Perisic, who was a fan favourite at the Turin giants’ fiercest rivals Inter Milan and cancelled out Weston McKennie’s cracking first-half opener with a thunderous strike of his own 10 minutes after half-time.
However he was far from happy despite netting such an important goal, annoyed at himself and the passive way Juve reacted to Perisic’s equaliser.
“Sure, I scored the winning goal, but I’m not happy with my performance. I know that I can do much better,” said Mbangula to Sky in Italy.
“When we conceded we needed to keep playing the way we were beforehand because we were in control… With the quality we have in this team if we had kept playing as we had done we could have scored a lot more goals.
“It’s difficult to be happy when you know you weren’t good enough.”
Juve travel to the Philips Stadion a week on Wednesday with a good chance of setting up a last-16 showdown with Inter, who they face in Turin on Sunday night after a third win in as many matches in all competitions.
Either Inter or Arsenal await whichever of these two teams makes it through the play-offs.
Mbangula strikes
Juve were the better team in the early stages and McKennie’s thumping 34th-minute strike came in a first half in which the hosts were the better team but struggled to make the most of their supremacy.
