Juventus limp to the end of the UCL league phase as Benfica bites again

At one point during Wednesday night’s Champions League matchup with Benfica, someone in a group chat I’m a part of asked when the last time Juventus had won a game was. I had to gently remind him that it was only two Saturdays ago when they had beaten AC Milan.

I couldn’t entirely blame him for posing the question, though. Since the second half of the Napoli match at the weekend, the match against Milan has felt farther and farther away.

It’s hard to tell which of the last two games seemed worse. Napoli had taken hold of the game in the second half and completely dominated the Bianconeri. Against Benfica, Juve controlled two-thirds of the possession, outshot their opponent, and completed 322 more passes — and yet with the exception of a single moment two minutes into the game, they hardly ever looked like they were going to score against the team that has terrorized them in European competition for years now.

Juve were off the pace all night. They may have completed 90 percent of their passes as a team, but the other 10 percent were often badly mishit, usually short, and often gave Benfica the chance to attack a short field. They took 10 of their 17 shots from inside the penalty area, but only managed four on target for the night. The defense, already deeply unconventional given the choices — forced and otherwise — at fullback, was thrown into further chaos when one of its top performers had to leave early due to injury.

The result was a game where Juventus posed hardly any real threat, while when Benfica chose to move forward they were able to do so with relative ease. Only a fantastic performance in goal by Mattia Perin kept the score as relatively modest as 2-0. Now, eight days after resuming Champions League play with a reasonable possibility of making the top eight, the Bianconeri finished the league phase in 20th — although that placement ironically led them to a potential matchup against more desirable teams than they otherwise could have.

Thiago Motta was still missing Arkadiusz Milik, while Andrea Cambiaso’s continuing ankle problem rendered him unavailable as well. New signings Randal Kolo Muani, Alberto Costa, and Renato Veiga were ineligible to play for Juve in Europe until the knockout stages. He made several changes to the 4-2-3-1 from the squad that collapsed in Naples on Saturday. Perin was one of the biggest, starting in goal behind an experimental-looking back line containing Timothy Weah, Federico Gatti, Pierre Kalulu, and Weston McKennie. Douglas Luiz and Khephren Thuram wee in midfield, while Francisco Conceição, Kenan Yildiz, and Samuel Mbangula supported Dusan Vlahovic in attack.

Benfica’s Bruno Lage was trying to guide his team through a rough week that started when the Lisbon club blew a 3-1 lead to lose 5-4 against Barcelona last week and continued through a 3-1 loss to Casa Pia, when they went up early only to give up three unanswered goals. Arthur Cabral and Alvaro Carreras were both suspended, and Renato Sanches and Tiago Gouveia were injured. Lage sent out a 4-3-3. Anatolii Trubin started in goal, protected by Tomás Araújo, Nicolás Otamendi, António Silva, and Alexander Bah. Fredrik Aursnes, Florentino, and Orkun Kökçü took responsibility for the engine room. A returning Ángel Di María, Vangelis, Pavlidis, and Andreas Schjelderup formed the attacking trident.

The game started as if it’d had a rocket strapped to its ass. The deficiencies of Motta’s decisions in the back became immediately became apparent when Di Maria was afforded far too much room and flashed a cross to the back post that was just in front of Pavlidis. A terrible attempt at a switch by Kalulu went right to Schjelderup, who was faced up by Gatti and had his shot blocked. Juve took the opportunity off that shot to counter, and Conceição dropped a cross perfectly for Mbangula, whose shot dropped perfectly for Mbangula to head for goal, but Trubin covered his near post well and parried the shot away. All that, packed into the first 120 seconds of gameplay.

The flanks continued to be a problem, and Perin had to get down to deny Scheldrup. After that, Juve managed to grab hold of possession and settle things down, but couldn’t manage to get the ball into position to put it on goal. Then several things went wrong at once that saw Benfica take the lead.

The first domino was Kalulu, who reached for a ball in the box and ended up hyperextending himself into a split. His reaction made it immediately apparent that he’d suffered some sort of hamstring injury. He came back onto the field a few minutes later, but after Juve conceded a corner Motta, forced to improvise given the lack of options in the back after the injuries to Bremer and Juan Cabal, replaced him with Manuel Locatelli, who would be expected to jump in at center-back.

The corner was immediately rejected by the first man, but Benfica regained the ball and sent it back over the top toward the goal. Gatti completely missed the pass to give Bah a free run into the area, and no one seemed to realize that Pavlidis was in the center of the box alone. Bah squared it easily for the the Greek striker, who followed up his hat trick against Barcelona with an easy finish past a stranded Perin.

The goal seemed to take the air out of Juve’s sails. There was far less purpose in their play, and the passing misses became egregious. Long passes in particular were badly off target, allowing Benfica to easily take them over or simply wait as they sailed over or past an intended target and out of play.

Weah did test Trubin in the 28th minute, latching on to a defensive header for a first-time belt from outside the box that the Benfica keeper almost spilled before managing to bring it under control. That was matched by Pavlidis less than sixty seconds later when he flicked a good cross along toward the far post. The shot looked like it might loop over Perin for a second before the keeper leaped up to grab it.

Yildiz took an inadvertent knee to the back of the head on the half-hour and had to come step off the field to treat a cut, returning with what can only be described as a Reverse Chiellini. Unfortunately it did little to energize the team as it so often did when Chiellini got himself busted open. Benfica could slice through a discombobulated defense seemingly whenever they wanted, while poor passes continued to gift Benfica chances. A particularly awful back pass by Thuram was jumped on by Pavlidis and run all the way into the box before Gatti managed to chase him down and prevent a shot. Another turnover just before the halftime whistle gave the Greek another chance one on one with Perin, who managed to get just enough of it to pop it into the air to land on the roof of the net.

Things didn’t get much better to start the second half. Intermediate- and long-range passing were still scattershot, and when Juve did get players neaer the box, they ran into a wall of red shirts with little or no choice but to try to force the ball through them.

Mbangula managed a shot from that spot he likes on the left side, but it had none of the curl of some of his previous efforts and was easily saved, then Thuram and Yildiz followed a few minutes later with efforts that were saved and hit into the side netting, respectively.

It seemed like those passages of play were starting to see some momentum build, and Motta tried to capitalize on it by introducing Teun Koopmeiners and Nico González, keeping Koopmeiners in the pivot in place of Thuram. González gave Juve a chance to equalize from a free kick moments after coming on, but Vlahovic’s effort didn’t dip in time and flew a foot or two over.

Juve kept the possession for much of the rest of the game, but couldn’t turn much of it into action in front of goal. There was the occasional spurt of danger—a cross from McKennie that González could only flick wide, another that Luiz poked toward goal only to be thwarted by Trubin. But Benfica still looked dangerous whenever they broke out of Juve’s sterile possessions, and with 10 minutes left in the game they finally pounced to ice the game.

Benfica worked the ball inside from the left before Pavlidis’ square pass was dummied into the path of Kökçü, who had streaked in from midfield completely unmarked, Conceição vainly chasing a few yards behind. The Turkish midfielder had a wide open lane to shoot and rifled one low and to his left past Perin.

Benfica had eyes on a third once or twice while Vlahovic juggled the ball in the middle of the box only to have his effort at to set up a grandstand finish blocked. As the final whistle blew, jeers rained down from the stands as Juve took a limp performance into the locker room, perhaps staring at an inflection point which could take the team into a rebound, or drag them into another second-half collapse.

LE PAGELLE

MATTIA PERIN – 7. Made a couple of fantastic saves that kept the scoreline from being much worse. He’s the reason even the remotest chance of a comeback existed for as long as it did.

TIMOTHY WEAH – 5. He’s played full-back in his career before, but it’s clear that he’s woefully miscast in that role. His positioning on the right was constantly off, allowing Benfica to slice through his side early. He was one of the closest anyone got to scoring for Juve.

FEDERICO GATTI – 4.5. Made a couple of good recoveries on counters, blocked a pair of shots and had three interceptions, but my goodness the miss on the long ball that set up the first goal was breathtakingly awful. Evened it up a little after that but was perhaps a little overwhelmed by the fact that he was the only true defender in the back four for almost the entire game.

PIERRE KALULU – NR. It’s worth noting that even he had some pretty awful passing mistakes before he was injured. Hopefully he won’t miss a ton of time.

WESTON McKENNIE – 5.5. Struggled on the flank to deal with Di María, but was also one of the few guys on the team that looked like he was really pushing through the whole 90 minutes. Created Juve’s two best chances from open play in the second half.

DOUGLAS LUIZ – 5. Not the kind of game that will help him, either in getting himself a consistent starting role or in impressing someone else enough to take him off Juve’s hands. Might’ve salvaged his game had that late redirection not been saved, but didn’t create the kind of incisiveness that could lead to bigger chances.

KHEPHREN THURAM – 5. Made some really awful passes that led to Benfica having a chance to extend their lead. Couldn’t keep the team moving forward in midfield.

FRANCISCO CONCEIÇÃO – 5. Led the team in dribbles and co-led in key passes, but too often he simply ran like a madman to the byline and sent in a blind cross that was easily dealt with by keeper or defense. Someone remarked that he’s starting to look a little like Milos Krasic in that regard, and I hate to say he has a little bit of a point. Needs to evolve how he plays to avoid turning into that entirely.

KENAN YILDIZ – 5. Seemed to take a major dip after he got that knee to the head. Made a couple of incisive runs into the box but could never make anything happen against an organized Benfica defense.

Photo by Marcio Machado/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images

SAMUEL MBANGULA – 5. Came close to scoring very early on that back-post header, but was bottled up for much of the rest of the night.

DUSAN VLAHOVIC – 4.5. He didn’t get much in the way of service, but did himself no favors when he had the ball either. His best chance was from the free kick, which he didn’t hit horribly but still missed. None of his five shots hit the target.

SUBS

MANUEL LOCATELLI – 5. Was one of the ring of players that failed to account for Pavlidis in the chaos following his introduction for Kalulu. Did get credited with a last-man tackle in the second half and wasn’t prone to the big mistake, leading the team in both tackles and clearances as well as touches—despite not being on the field for the first 15 minutes. Still, this game showed the limitations of Locatelli as a center-back option against higher-level opposition.

NICO GONZÁLEZ – 6. Lively from the moment he came on, drawing the foul for the direct free kick and providing a pair of key passes. Tried to get the rest of the team to push with him but found them too ground down to really lift up.

TEUN KOOPMEINERS – 5. Had hardly any impact on proceedings once he came on. Did make one key pass, but his lone corner delivery was poor. He needs to start righting the ship.

MANAGER ANALYSIS

Thiago Motta made some strange decisions in this game, starting with right-back. As mentioned before, Weah has played full-back in a game before, when he was at Lille, but he simply wasn’t capable of defending adequately against Benfica.

Photo by Daniele Badolato – Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images

Why he made this choice is anyone’s guess. Perhaps he wanted some more offensive push from the flank. Perhaps it was as simple as wanting to give Nicolò Savona a day off, and there being little to come off the bench to replace him with Cambiaso hurt, Danilo gone and Alberto Costa cup-tied. Regardless, Weah’s presence seemed to destabilize the entire line, with no one in the right positions to keep Benfica from splitting the line over and over again. Sending Savona on, perhaps pushing Weah up to take the place of Conceição, might have provided the team with the stability in the second half to push for goals without having to worry as much about getting broken apart.

It’s also worth questioning why Perin was starting such an important game. Don’t get me wrong, Perin was fantastic and is a starter on all but a handful of teams around the world. But Perin’s lack of ability with his feet was again apparent, and may have put a crimp in the way Juve normally want to move the ball. He wasn’t subject to the ravenous press that he was the last time he played against Bologna, and he didn’t make any big mistakes today, but Michele Di Gregorio is so much better at moving the ball, and in a game with the stakes this one had, it’s still perplexing to see Perin in there.

Altogether, this game leaves Juve back where it began before the Milan win. Their possession was mostly sterile, there was very little off-ball movement, and anything other than a short pass was often wayward. Motta may be at a pivot point in the season. Juve’s next two games are, on paper, games they should win comfortably, before they delve into their Champions League playoff as well as the return of the Derby d’Italia. These next two games are shaping up to be must-wins to shake off the feeling that everything is going south.

LOOKING AHEAD

Having finished 20th in the league phase table, Juve will go into Friday’s playoff draw set to play either PSV Eindhoven or AC Milan. That outcome is a lot better than some of the combinations they looked to be up against before the day’s games came to a close on Wednesday. Juve have put up convincing wins against both of their potential opponents—albeit in form far different to how they look now.

Before they can think about that, though, they have a lunchtime kickoff against Empoli and a trip to Como to think about, then the Inter match will be sandwiched between the legs of the playoff.