After PSV Eindhoven, Leg 2: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

The Good

Star Spangled Screamer

Say what you will about this absolute collapse of Juventus in their final match of the 2024-2025 Champions League season, but the one saving grace that came from early in the second half was Timothy Weah’s screamer of a goal to equalize after PSV managed to take the lead. It was an eerily similar shot to Weston McKennie’s goal against the same side at the Allianz only one week prior, and says a good deal about the USMNT talent that plays abroad.

Through all the issues and controversy that Juventus has faced in the past few years, Weah has remained a consistently impactful player since he first donned a Juventus shirt. He was a summer 2023 signing under then-manager Max Allegri, and has proved his mettle over the past two seasons, performing well under different managers, styles of play, and with the very new cast of teammates who came to Juventus at the onset of the Thiago Motta era.

The Gatti Complex

Similar to the early-season injury issues that saw striker Dusan Vlahovic playing almost every single match across all competitions due to there being no other option, credit must be given to Federico Gatti. This season alone, he has had to step up in defense as the likes of Gleison Bremer, Juan Cabal, Pierre Kalulu, and now Renato Veiga have all been sidelined due to a seemingly never-ending injury crisis at the back. Though the result of Wednesday night’s match was far from what the Juventus faithful hoped for, it is worth noting that the man from Rivoli did manage a whopping 13 clearances and two blocked shots. Most notably was his clearance in the 60th minute as a Luuk de Jong corner was sent careening into the middle of the box, and it looked as if PSV would enjoy another goal against the Bianconeri.

While the great wall of Gatti has surely made mistakes in his time, there is no underestimating the physical toll that 34 matches played across all competitions takes on a defender, especially when his fellow defenders have been dropping like flies. In fact, there have only been three matches all season that Gatti has not taken part in — Stuttgart in the Champions League, and Napoli and Genoa in the Serie A. To that end, the first of those was a loss, the second was a shaky draw, and the third was actually a quite decisive win.

Digre the Great

Recent news confirmed that Michelle Di Gregorio will be a permanent part of the new Juventus squad in the coming season, which should be a sigh of relief. Make no mistake, there is very little praise for allowing three goals, but that is generally a mixed effort between the keeper and defense, and PSV was very early on able to exploit the crippled Bianconeri back line. It seemed to be a no-win situation for Di Gregorio the moment that Viega went down 10 minutes in, but the match stats do tell a “fino alla fine” story for the former Monza man. Over the course of 120 minutes, the keeper faced down a total of 25 shots, with 10 of them on target. He registered seven saves, which in a match where PSV had the upper hand for the majority, should be commended for it.

Di Gregorio faced in this match the Achilles Heel of Juventus’ defense during the second and third PSV goal. The Bianconeri defense has great moments outside the box, but it’s almost a formula now that the opposition can crowd up the box and take advantage over the scrambling Juventus line, leaving very little that Di Gregorio can do with the ball so close to the goal line. It’s been seen time and time again in Serie A this season, but less of the blame can be put on El Digre.

The Bad

Prepare for the Worst

The opening 15 or so minutes should have been a gross indicator to Motta and the squad that PSV did not come to play around, and that their tactics in this match were heavily focused on a strike first and strike fast approach. Now this can be a problem for any team, but Juventus has faced this time and time again over the course of the season, and have trained for this eventuality. Any kind of corto muso approach to a team that simply will not stop their salvo of attacks would work if it were the late 1990s or early 2000s and the arguably greatest class of Italian defenders were still touching the grass on a weekly basis.

But this is a hobbled Juventus with a shaky back line who have time and time again dropped points to teams doing the exact same thing as PSV. A team like this simply can’t be complacent playing for a draw with an aggregate lead, but the attacking and approach of trying to go a goal or two up simply floundered in this match. Juventus cannot be content in one-goal outputs in such a critical match. With credit due to the attempts made by the likes of Randal Kolo Muani and Francisco Conceicao, one of the largest issues with the club this season has been scoring goals, especially when it comes to an even score or from behind.

After the opening 15 minutes, Juventus should have realized that they would need to get a leg up early, as they simply are not at the point yet to play themselves out of a draw and into a win.

Take the man out of Inter

It looks like Ivan Perisic still has a chip on his shoulder from all of those days wearing an Inter jersey, and it certainly showed.

The 36-year-old played what was arguably one of his best matches in years, registering six shots, three of which were on target, and being able to claim the opening goal of the match. Walking through it, PSV turned Juventus’ defense inside out, where three yellow and pink shirts could not stop Noa Lang from barreling down the left side and crossing it to a Perisic who was already five steps ahead of Nico Gonzalez, and then of course made short work of the goal scoring opportunity. It was a passage of play that should have been a bit easier to stop for Juventus, as their primary weakness this season has been the aforementioned issue with shots in a crowded box, but nonetheless this goal gave PSV a level of momentum that would eventually crush Juventus 3-1.

Giveaway and Launch

When a club is put on its back heels, facing down shot after shot after shot, it’s easy to be content with a clearance of the ball toward the half line, and clearances in a tight spot deserve to be commended even if they end up right back in the possession of the opposing club. However, this match was a passing nightmare when it came to giveaways and long balls. Juventus simply could not keep their passing tight and concise, which led to only a 40% possession rate and 76% passing accuracy for the Bianconeri, two numbers that are in contrast to what has been seen this season.

To look at individual cases of this, Newcastle loanee and recent point of fan ire Lloyd Kelly attempted 8 long ball passes with an accuracy rate of 25%, Gatti attempted 5 with an accuracy of 20%, and Weah tried his hand at 6 long balls with an accuracy of 25%. Now, that’s not to say that long balls are not extremely difficult, as they very much are. And this could be more on the midfield and attackers who simply could not wrangle it away from PSV, but the old adage of insanity being defined by doing something over and over again and expecting a different result comes into play here. Tinkering should not just be done in training or when a lead is so high that a club can experiment in an all but shut out match, there can also be mid-match triage when things simply do not work.

Lazy Lineup

The big question on many people’s minds at the beginning of this match was why Khephren Thuram and Kenan Yildiz were not in the starting lineup. Which of course was made inevitably worse when in his post match interview, Motta made it clear that he would not have changed a thing. But looking at the season these two players have had, isn’t it best to field your best players at the start of a big match that will require more than one goal scored to keep the aggregate lead?

Thuram has been wildly consistent over the course of this season, more so than the majority of Juventus’ midfield, and excels in his passing and ability to barrel down the center of the pitch in attacking runs while the opposition converges on him. As for Yildiz, not much needs to be said. The winger has admittedly been fielded a good bit this season, maybe too much for a 19-year-old, but nonetheless has been an absolute standout, more than Gonzalez who has had a series of ups and downs since he first sacrificed Florentine purple for the black and white of Turin.

Managers have their motives and reasoning, but this was a match to field your absolute best and pray it’s enough to see the UCL Round of 16, not to field players because they were a big investment and this will hopefully be a match that pays it off.

The Ugly

Vieg-Ouch

At this point, what can be said about the defender crisis?

Within 10 minutes Wednesday night, Viega went down and had to be subbed off, and now it had been revealed that he suffered an injury to his tendon in his right leg and will be out for at least three weeks. Just in time for Cagliari, Empoli, Verona, Atalanta, and maybe Fiorentina. This is a crushing blow not just because it’s another defender out, but because Viega had begun to show his mettle in the few matches he played for Juventus, and had some moments reminiscent of Bremer. Remember him? The Brazilian who before his ACL injury was arguably the best defender in Italy.

Now would the game have gone a lot differently with a healthy Viega? Who is to say, speculation on these things only lead to heartbreak. But it can be said that his absence was immediately felt, and his void not filled.

Dent in the Armor

Long has it been said that Juventus’ issue has been in defending, but it needs to be highlighted that the other big issue is attacking. Two very important parts of this game, but generally credit can be given to the midfield. The early days of Kolo Muani were filled with hope and excitement, and hopefully will be replicated in coming matches. Meanwhile the defense has been a patchwork of gaps being filled and hope that the opposition also has a mediocre attack. But how powerful is this black and white knight of Turin when his sword is dull and his armor is dented?

It’s something that has been highlighted over and over again this season, that attacks are not cohesive and accurate, while the defense is allowing too much to happen on their watch. Will this be a wakeup call to Motta that things need to change if there is a level of success to be attained? Who knows. If 13 draws where so many of them have come from going a goal up only to concede and then not being able to find the net again haven’t been that wakeup call already, the odds may be slim.

Good, bad, or ugly?

Brutto and cattivo are not the right words for this. Bad games happen, and so do ugly ones. But looking at the past few Champions League campaigns, being bested by Porto, Villarreal, Lyon, and now PSV shows that Juventus are far from being back to their mid-2010s ways. Remember that this is the same team that had Gary Neville of the 1999 Manchester United squad, who won both the Premier League and the Champions League, shaking in his boots when he heard that Juventus qualified. The dominance, the mentality of victory first, and the belief of being one of the greatest clubs in the world, has simply left Juventus.

Generally, I disagree with the “I” form method of publishing articles, but for the sake of this hill to die on, there are anecdotes that are worth sharing. I met a Barcelona fan a few weeks ago and as we spoke about our favorite clubs, the first thing he said was “you guys used to be great, now you’re practically irrelevant.” Additionally, there is a Real Madrid fan who lives in my apartment complex, and when we talked of football, he told me that the last time Juventus was good was in 2017, to which I kindly reminded him that he was probably in third grade at the time.

The point being, the outside world of football is aware that Juventus is a shadow of its former self, fans and critics and rivals alike see this. Why can’t the club? And if they do, where is the realization of a need for change? I love this club, and I will die on the hill of “fino alla fine,” but it is time to realize that the football world is passing us by.

But it doesn’t have to.