Sports

Juventus is pretty garbage and it’s pretty wonderful


Massimiliano Allegri

Massimiliano Allegri
Picture: beautiful pictures

While a traditional powerhouse of European football may only in a temporary blip, another one fell off a horse and then that horse urinated on them. Bayern Munich is likely to recover. On the other hand, Juventus may be in trouble for a while.

Juve lost to Monza on Sunday, a fifth straight game without a win in all competitions. They were deservedly beaten at home by Benfica in the Champions League before. They drew with Salernitana at home to enter that European adventure, which comes after PSG played quite a bit with them at the Parc de Princes before. They have won only two of their nine games so far this season.

All of that has made Juve 8th in the Serie A standings. And they deserve to be there. By metrics like expected target and projected target against, eighth is about the best they can hope for so far in this campaign. They may indeed be in luck, as their goalkeepers have saved three more goals than expected so far in Serie A, the second best in the league. If they only scored average, they would be in the bottom half of the table.

It’s a mess all over the field. Juventus is fourth in Serie A in terms of shots on target per game. They are third in terms of the number of passes into the opponent’s box. They stand in the middle of the group during the act of creating footage every 90 minutes. They never put pressure on the ball in the opponent’s half, and hardly did so in the middle third. They won the third fewest tackles. They don’t attack well and defend well, it’s a funny way to win football matches – which is supposed to be Juventus’ business.

Juve think they’ve solved things by doing what the European powers do, which is throwing money in all directions, and hoping what comes from the assembly line will scream. Last winter, the awardee was Dušan Vlahović from Fiorentina, and there certainly can’t be any complaints there. He’s been everything a true No 9 should have been since his arrival, scoring 11 goals in 21 games since arriving midway through last season.

But symbolic of the current dysfunction in the black and white half of Turin, Denis Zakaria was bought last January, and this August was loaned out to Chelsea. And it’s not like there’s been a manager or regime change. They just spun around on him within months.

It continued this summer. While calls for manager Massimiliano Allegri to be axed have certainly echoed throughout the hills, the front office has said that there is a project that will take years to come to total fruition. But what is that project? Paul Pogba was brought back from Man United and Angel Di Maria signed on a free transfer. But they’re 29 and 34. Pogba hasn’t even gotten on the field ( charm unlike before) and not until January. Matthijs De Ligt, just 23, was cornered to Munich, even though they were someone they could build around. Danilo and Juan Cuadrado have started a lot in defence, and both are in their 30s.

Keep unraveling whatever this project might be in the middle of the yard. No one is sure exactly what it’s supposed to do. It didn’t help that Allegri kept swinging between two or three central defenders behind them. It can be creatively heavy, especially through Miretti or Rabiot or teenage Paredes, but it doesn’t have much of a punch. We have recorded how West McKennie ran around a lot, but he didn’t really do anything other than rush into the box late to score. He is a “sound and furious” player most of the time, except when he scores. There’s not a single defense shut down here and it won’t be solved by the return of Pogba.

They were not helped by the immobility of the front line before they had the ball. Vlahović doesn’t press the ball at all, and neither does Filip Kostic (both at 10 percent or less in any kind of pressure or defense on the strikers). Di Maria is a minion without the ball. This is the same problem Juve had when Cristiano Ronaldo was in pain, groaning and not moving when he wasn’t trying to score, and allowing teams to slip through the midfield through the open gate he leave ahead. Nothing changes.

It all comes together to make the Juventus a terrifying watch. Too many guys want to do the same thing, too many guys don’t want to do enough, and people just don’t seem to be where they’re supposed to be. They have produced just over 2.0 xG in a game this season and they have only had one game where they have managed more than five shots on target. They are inert.

And it won’t be easy to get back into the Serie A race, or even the top four, or step out of the Champions League race. They then got a double header against Maccabi Haifa after this international break, but even if PSG took all six points against Benfica at the same time, Juve still had to travel to Lisbon and get a result and have could be another result at home against PSG to progress. And Juve don’t like to be a club playing on Thursday night.

In the league, Milan, Inter, Napoli and Atalanta all proved to be significantly better, and Roma and Lazio could easily say they were on par with Juve. At least most of these teams seem to have a plan, which Juve only claims.

And quite frankly, it’s hard not to indulge. President Andreas Agnelli, still holding on to his fractured Super League dream, thinks Juve have somehow outgrown Serie A, as they conceded they won the Scudetto after the Scudetto. But now they have sunk and can’t seem to find a way out. Hiring Maurizio Arrivabene as director is pretty hilarious, as most F1 fans will tell you what a previous life running Ferrari was leave Ferrari the current mess they are. If there’s a team that can make its own pitch, it’s Juve.

Not many tears will fall for them all over Italy, unless they stop laughing.



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