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We should’ve seen this coming. And as it stands, we should expect to see it again.
That didn’t go as planned.
Juventus had an impressive Champions League run this season, quieting the high octane offenses of Barcelona and Monaco on their way to their second UCL Finals in three years. Despite the loss of Paul Pogba and Álvaro Morata, this version looked even better than its predecessor. Constant-transfer-window-darling Paulo Dybala, proven international striker Gonzalo Higuain, Super Mario Mandzukic, and a defensive midfield duo of Sami Khedira and new-addition Miralem Pjanic to cover a sound defensive center back pairing of Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini (even a solid rotation of Andrea Barzagli and Medhi Benatia thrown into the mix) silenced the best attacks while generating off-the-xG-charts offense that looked like a formidable opponent for what many thought was a stretched-thin Real Madrid side. After all, Los Blancos just endured a La Liga title race that came down to the wire while the Zebras sleepwalked to more titles. How could this go wrong?
One 4–1 defeat later, and i bianconeri are left reeling. Again.
This was supposed to be a competitive Champions League Final, and for the first half of football, Juventus were one Mandzukic golazo ahead of Real Madrid in the headlines, making the 1–1 scoreline look as if the scales were ready to tip in favor of the Turin side after halftime. The opposite could not have been more true, with Real storming the gates, overextending Juventus’ wing backs, overloading the midfield, and overwhelming Juventus’ defensive third to create an insurmountable deficit just over an hour into the match, further showing just how superior this Real Madrid squad is to the rest of the world.
A tragedy that is greater than any opera or cinematic production, unfortunately, is that the Juventus machine appears it will only continue this tradition of Italian dominance paired with European disappointment. And we should have known it was going to happen.
Twenty-one years have passed since Juventus last won a UEFA Champions League title—a 1–1 result against Ajax that was won by a 4–2 count in penalty kicks at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. They followed up the title defense with another Champions League final appearance against Ottmar Hitzfeld’s Borussia Dortmund. However, Karl-Heinz Riedle struck Juventus in the mouth twice in the first half, putting the bianconeri on their heels for much of the match, and they ultimately lost 3–1. The following year saw more of a grind in the Champions League final against Real Madrid, but they eventually fell short due to a single Predrag Mijatovic goal.
Both losses occurred despite a roster containing Alessandro Del Piero, Didier Deschamps, Angelo Di Livio, Zinedine Zidane, Edgar Davids, and Filippo Inzaghi—the latter three purchased the summer after their 1996 Champions League title. Through the years, Juventus typically played in a four-back formation, emphasizing playing out from the back through key pivots, which they have had in spades over the years: from Deschamps to Davids to Tacchinardi to the greatest of the great, Andrea Pirlo. Even when they went with a three-back defense, attack stemming from their pivot remained unchanged.
While they have a heavy distinction for prioritizing their academy, Juventus haven’t been shy of spending to acquire talent to win now. The issue has been the talent they’ve acquired and how they’ve used them, while dealing out academy products like car salesmen. For example, though there’s no debate Thierry Henry was one of the most impactful players to grace us with his presence, when he arrived in Turin, he was played out of position and thus couldn’t handle Italian defensive disciplines. He was sold a year later to Arsenal and, well, we know how that story went.
The summer following their 2003 Champions League loss to A.C. Milan, they stood pat with their squad and didn’t bring in roster-impacting transfers. Through the years, they would still land tremendous starters like Luca Toni, Andrea Barzagli, and Leonardo Bonucci, but then they’d follow it up with expensive flops like Thiago, Marco Motta, Amauri, and Mohamed Sissoko. Plus, the long rebuilding period after the Calciopoli scandal proved detrimental to regaining their Champions League form for quite some time. Despite this, they were able to bring in names like Álvaro Morata, Carlos Tevez and Paul Pogba to spearhead their eventual 2015 Champions League run.
However, one thing has stayed fairly consistent: outside of the one year Didier Deschamps was in control of the squad from 2006–07, in the 94 years since the Agnelli family took over Juventus, 27 of those years contained a manager who was not Italian-born—many came in the early years during the Hungarian dominance of European football, where the bianconeri hired many Hungarian managers. In fact, before Deschamps, their last non-Italian manager was… you guessed it! Cestmír Vycpálek in 1971–1974. This has resulted in fairly stale tactics and strategies outside of domestic play, and while they can catch some opponents off-guard, they eventually run into a brick wall, and their transfer window adjustments don’t fare much better in the Champions League the following season. This has been going on for some time now, and it’s reminiscent of Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, in Groundhog’s Day, trying multiple actions and reckless behaviors, but ultimately repeating the same day over and over again. All that’s missing is waking up to “I Got You Babe” and it would be way too meta.
What lessons were learned from all those past failures on the European stage, including the fairly recent loss to Barcelona in 2015? Through the years, Massimiliano Allegri and Juventus—and Italian football, in general—have stuck to principles as traditional as battuto, soffrito, and insaporire in Italian cooking. This was achieved through fluid offense play centered around a pivot while bringing a midfield press that overloads the center of the pitch and traps opponents on the flanks, cornering them and removing passing outlets, which allow the transition from defense to offense to take place higher up the pitch and catch opponents by surprise. It was the centerpiece for winning yet another Serie A and Copa Italia title and their consistent dominance of Italian football, as well as the Italian National team making a surprising run in the 2016 Euros.
The greatest issue with their offseason transfers has been losing youthful talent for players who are on the wrong side of 20 and haven’t resulted in the expected return on investment. Spending €90 million on Gonzalo Higuain from Napoli—the fourth-most expensive transfer at the time—has resulted in 24 goals in 38 Serie A appearances, as well as scoring three goals in four Copa Italia matches. When it came to the Champions League, he scored five times in 12 matches: two against Monaco in the first leg, and two against Dinamo Zagreb and one against Lyon in the Group Stage (none against Barcelona).
Though many would love to point to this and say it’s Higuain’s fault, we have to look at Juventus’ transfers leading to a roster ill-equipped for Champions League play. They were able to stifle a Busquets-less Barcelona and overpower the midfield, but against Real Madrid, their midfield was outclassed in the second half once Marcelo and Carvajal could surpass the press that was effective in the first half. This resulted in the disappearance of Sami Khedira, Miralem Pjanic, and Paulo Dybala, all of whom were effective in matches against Monaco and Barcelona, as well as league play, but vanished in the most important match of European club competition. There is only so much a club’s striker can do when he isn’t able to receive the ball because the midfield is getting outmatched and losing possession early.
This isn’t anything new, either: a significant downfall these Juventus squads have repeatedly succumbed to is overpowering wing back play by their opponents, eventually snowballing into losing control of the midfield. In their loss to Borussia Dortmund in 1997, Sergio Porrini and Mark Iuliano were ultimately outmatched by Jörg Heinrich and Stefan Reuter. The same issue occurred the following year against Real Madrid, as Roberto Carlos and Christian Panucci overwhelmed Di Livio and Pessotto.
After Marcelo Lippi returned to the squad in 2001, their 2003 Champions League final against A.C. Milan saw both sides suffer significant in-game injuries. Juventus overcame mediocre wing back play through the talents of midfielders Gianluca Zambrotta and Mauro Camoranesi in a Flat 4–4–2, eventually losing out in a penalty kick shootout. This was probably their best showing on the international stage since their title victory in 1996. Their 2015 campaign somewhat returned to their roots in a 4–4–2 diamond, emphasizing Arturo Vidal as a box-to-box № 10 role while Andrea Pirlo was a… cough cough… pivotal pivot. Yet Stephan Lichtsteiner and an ancient artifact known as Patrice Evra still couldn’t handle Dani Alves and Jordi Alba (to be fair, how many could in 2015?), and they were outclassed by Barcelona in the 2015 Champions League final.
Though Juventus have primarily stuck to Italian playmakers who would obviously work in an Italian system, they haven’t shied away from players who have performed tremendously on the international stage, such as Juan Cuadrado and Higuain. In the Champions League finals against Real Madrid, their poor wing back play was supposed to be resolved with the addition of Dani Alves, who is very familiar facing this opponent from his days at Barcelona. However, Allegri played him as a midfielder, and his pairing with an out-of-position Barzagli proved insufficient against the superior Marcelo. On the other side of the pitch, Mario Madzukic regularly played forward to pair with Higuain, leaving a Carvajal-sized space on the right, which was only made larger due to the asymmetrical formation Juventus played in order to control Cristiano Ronaldo on the left, shadowing him with Khedira and leaving Benzema and Isco alone. Zidane countered this by playing Isco in tandem with Marcelo instead of drifting around as much, while getting Kroos and Modric to control the midfield, and the game opened up significantly, especially with a Paul Pogba and Andrea Pirlo-sized hole in the midfield.
There is nothing directly wrong with Massimiliano Allegri’s preferred style of play. High lines and a high press to trap opponents and cause a turnover in the midfield has proven effective—it’s what Antonio Conte did with his Italian National team and Chelsea squad, and how Claudio Ranieri was able to stun the English soccer world with his Leicester City team that won the Premier League.
However, Juventus have gone about this all wrong, with incapable or aging wing backs. What has made teams like Barcelona and Real Madrid so lethal (well, one of many reasons) is their ability to get effective wing back play out of Marcelo and Carvajal for Real Madrid or Sergi Roberto and Jordi Alba for Barcelona. Juventus have historically relied heavily on attacking through the middle of the pitch, through pivots like Pirlo and Deschamps, or box-to-box midfielders like Pogba and Vidal in the seasons before this, as well as Pjanic and Dybala this season. The offense becomes one-dimensional and easy to dismantle, and when this fails, their attack is dead on arrival, as witnessed in Real Madrid outshooting them 18–9 off just 56.3% possession. Therefore, it will be vital for the bianconeri to purchase world-class wing backs that can handle both offensive and defensive workloads.
Another issue is deciding whether to focus on the development of Dybala as a legitimate № 10, or purchase a dynamic distributor that can individually cause headaches for defenses. In years prior, they’ve had a world class playmaker at this position, but as it stands, the 23-year old is all they have. While there is no question he is a future star, he is still just a star for the future. If Juventus are going to be something more than a powerhouse outside the Italian peninsula, they need an experienced playmaker who is able to create chances—not just for their strikers, but for himself when options A and B are shut down.
The issue we see with Juventus isn’t an issue they suffer alone. We see similar instances in the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1: teams that can dominate domestic play, but fall short on the European stage. Premier League teams have the opposite problem, as there are so many teams competing for just four Champions League spots that we see a continuous rotation of overextended contenders who have to deal with multiple competitions, along with their league play, beating each other to a pulp thanks to an unforgiving and relentless schedule before they see their Champions League opponent. La Liga doesn’t have this issue, as they get an iron-sharpens-iron approach to their league while playing a more generous schedule.
The only hope clubs like Juventus can have is to find and develop talent to add depth to their roster, who can take to the competition outside of domestic play, without falling into the pitfalls of purchasing name-only talent to appease fans and sell tickets. That’s a big ask, and modern players are forgoing bigger clubs for the sake of getting game time. But as we’ve seen by Real Madrid, it’s certainly achievable if you have the club culture and philosophy that cultivates such an environment. And as we’ve seen, many big clubs simply don’t do that—Juventus included.
Patrick Onofre is co-creator of The Challengers Podcast, a soccer website and podcast that discusses the Premier League, the Bundesliga, and La Liga. Listen to their show on iTunes, like them on Facebook, and follow them on twitter — @ChallengersPod.
