We talk the ups and downs of rooting for Juventus this year, the disappointment in Eindhoven and what’s next.
During my very first performance review right out of college, I remember my boss at the time told me a phrase that has stuck with me for my entire career.
“It’s all about just showing up every day and getting it done. Everyday being the most important part.”
He said it in a rather negative way, because I was young and dumb and half-assing it beyond believe and I very much did not show up every day. You could argue I didn’t show up half of the time. I thought I was smarter than I actually was, and in my mind I could dick around for most of my workday and get all my work done in the last couple of hours before checking out — which was a spectacularly risky and bad way of going about things that only led to being bad at my work.
I never really got along with my first boss. He was hard to work with and it took a second for me to grasp that I wasn’t at college anymore and I actually had to try for a change — which was a bad combination. But his words did stick with me. It is about getting it done even when you don’t want to or don’t feel like it. It’s about being consistent.
You know who doesn’t show up every day? Juventus, that’s who.
After beating Inter Milan 1-0 at home this past weekend in one of their best games of the season to continue a season-long winning streak of four straight, Juventus turned around and laid a complete egg of a performance Wednesday night against PSV Eindhoven, getting trounced 3-1 and knocked out of the Champions League in the play-off round.
With this result, Juventus hasn’t won a knockout round in the Champions League since the Round of 16 against Atletico Madrid in 2019. That’s six seasons for those of you counting at home. Juventus also lost their second chance of the season for a potential trophy after getting bounced from the Supercoppa last month. The Champions League was never a realistic objective, but still … another one bites the dust.
Let’s cook.
Vlahovic Out
Is the Dusan Vlahovic era already done in Turin?
Ever since the signing of Randal Kolo Muani was official, the loanee from Paris Saint-Germain has immediately and decidedly taken ownership of the striker position and thus relegating Juve’s No. 9 to the bench.
For both the Inter game and the one against PSV Eindhoven, Vlahovic remained glued to the bench, only getting minutes late in the 3-1 loss to the Dutch champions and failing to make much of a difference. The fact Kolo Muani has been playing really well obviously makes things a lot easier for Thiago Motta, but it is telling that as soon as the Brazilian manager of Juventus had another player at his disposal for the striker position, Vlahovic was unceremoniously dumped to the substitute bench.
Vlahovic has 12 goals in all competitions this season, and unless something crazy happens it looks like it will be another season in which the highest paid player on the Juve roster (and now all of Serie A) fails to crack the 20-goal mark in league play. It’s probably fair to say that we might be seeing the last of Vlahovic as a Juventus player as the offers will surely come for the guy in the summer and considering how everything is going a change of scenery might not be the worst thing.
It’s unfortunate, but it sure looks like it’s another swing and a miss on a big-money signing in attack that came from Fiorentina, huh?
Crash and Burn
2019!
2019 is the last time Juventus won a knockout round in the Champions League!
That’s insanely long ago and the streak continues for yet another year after the disappointing showing from the Bianconeri in Eindhoven on Wednesday.
In the latest episode of The Old Lady Speaks — subscribe and rate and all that good stuff — the crew mentioned that all Juventus had to do was play a mistake-free game and they would go through. Perhaps it was too much to ask for a team that has played maybe a handful of games all season without any mistakes to pull one off in an extremely hostile environment in a closeout match.
Juventus was consistently outplayed throughout the game, allowed three goals, got out possessed, out shot and dumped out of the premier club competition in the world. At no point did they look like the better team against a PSV squad that, all due respect, wasn’t anything extraordinary. Hell, Juventus had already beat this team twice before, but in their first big test on the European stage the Bianconeri managed little more than to piss down their leg.
This is a team that still doesn’t really have a defined starting lineup, is still showing a lot of the same mistakes that they were displaying five or six months ago, cannot hold a lead to save their lives, struggles to consistently generate scoring chances and in general doesn’t really do anything at a particularly high level.
After a managerial change, a €230 million investment in the squad and seven months into the new project, this team feels as far from competing against the top tier teams in Europe as they did a year ago. With 13 games left in Serie A, an extremely tight race for the top four and a relatively easy schedule remaining, are you all that confident this team can not trip all over themselves and not blow a top four spot?
I just don’t know anymore, man.
Parting Shot of the Week
If you couldn’t tell, I’m upset.
It’s February and this sure as hell feels like another lost year for a team that could not be farther from the all conquering squad that dominated the entire past decade.
A lot of questions will be asked from now until the end of the season about the future of the current project for Juventus. There’s still a significant number of games to play and at least one more competition in which they remain alive in the Coppa Italia.
(The Scudetto is gone, it’s been gone for a while even if mathematically is not.)
But to me, the thing that bothers me most is that there is no significant, steady improvement from the team we saw in the beginning of the season. It’s like watching the same game over and over again for seven months straight and just now knowing how it’s going to turn out because there is absolutely no discernible trend.
I’m in no mood for — yet another — teardown, but man, if things continue on this way, the arguments to keep steady are going to become fewer and fewer.
Football sucks, why do we do this to ourselves?
See you next time.
