What a difference a couple of weeks makes, huh?
Not that long ago, we were talking about the Luciano Spalletti-led Juventus looking like they were turning a corner. The team was scoring in bunches, playing fun football and finally showing glimpses of life.
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As we sit here in the final days of February now, Juventus is out of the Champions League and Coppa Italia. The Bianconeri lost against Inter Milan and Como in Serie A and now trail the league leaders by a whopping 18 points (!!!), putting them for all intents and purposes out of any title chase this season. How about another exciting race for the top four and Champions League qualification to close out the season, lads? Oh, right, Juventus also now trail Roma — who they play on Sunday night at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome! — by four points for the fourth-place spot and are dangerously close to dropping out of Europe entirely, with the aforementioned Como and Atalanta one point off them in the race to make Europa League.
Exciting times, indeed.
Let’s cook.
Feel-Good Loss
Juventus sure showed a lot of fight on Wednesday against Galatasaray. Yup, even after being railroaded by the ref and playing essentially all second half with 10 men, it was a laudable effort to get it to overtime.
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(There was quite literally nothing Lloyd Kelly could have done on that play to avoid landing on the ankle of the Gala player. It was the most egregious call in a streak of referees being completely unable to apply just a smidge of context when calling a game.)
It was, indeed, heartwarming to see the fans cheer the team off the pitch after the final whistle and recognize the effort of their fallen gladiators. Captain Manuel Locatelli said all the right things after the game — and played a really good match, too — showing his emotions on his sleeve and what this game meant to the beleaguered squad.
To be clear, Juventus did not lose the tie because of what happened on Wednesday. They lost it by pissing down their leg imploding in the second half of the first leg in Turkey last week. When you are looking at overturning a three-goal disadvantage, you need to play the perfect game and then hope for everything else you don’t control to go perfect. Evidently, that did not quite happen. It was encouraging and fun to see them mount a comeback with everything going against them, however, the main takeaway of this elimination is not that.
The reality is that this is the second year in a row Juventus gets bounced in the Round of 32 of the Champions League. They haven’t won a Champions League knockout round since 2019 and the list of teams that Juventus has lost to in said rounds is not exactly a murderer’s row of elite European clubs either.
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(Since 2020, in order, Juventus has lost in the knockout rounds to Lyon, Porto, Villareal, PSV Eindhoven and now Galatasaray. They got bounced in the group stage in 2022 and did not play at all due to the European ban in 2024.)
The Bianconeri haven’t really been a threat in Europe for close to a decade now, and it is undeniable that this is no longer a rough streak or a bad moment in time. It’s the new reality. We are the type of club prone to self-imploding. We are the type of team that loses ties against competition from mid- to lower-level leagues. Local media was calling Wednesday’s result an upset, and on paper, sure, it is. But in reality, these kinds of results stopped being a shocker a long time ago.
We are now a favorable draw, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the new reality for Juventus.
Who are you?
Well, those Spalletti revolution conversations sure started and stopped in a hurry.
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Spalletti is not doing a bad job as the manager of Juventus. He came in once the season already started and there have been some decent flashes of play. The fact that Juventus managed to mount a comeback in the second leg against Galatasaray speaks to the kind of mentality he’s instilling in this team.
(How much do you want to bet that Thiago Motta’s Juventus just rolls over and dies in that same spot?)
Then again, if you want to give Spalletti credit for the good, you also have to give him blame for the bad. Despite the good streak, Juventus has struggled over the course of the last month, leaking goals left and right and getting knocked out of all cup competitions. Overall, it has been a mixed bag, to say the least.
We often hear about an interim coach “earning” a shot to keep the job full time. No one is saying that coming in the middle of the season is an easy gig, but is just steadying the ship enough to warrant a full season? We just saw Juventus make the mistake of doing just that with Igor Tudor. He steadied the ship, did the bare minimum in his stint as an interim, then they gave him a one0year, prove-it sort of deal and he was gone before the end of October.
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Spalletti has a significantly better pedigree than Tudor, and to his credit his heights as a Juve coach have been higher than anything a Tudor-led squad ever achieved. There’s also an argument to be made that having four coaches in two years is a non-starter to begin with, which I don’t necessarily disagree with.
Still, there’s another crucial decision coming for Juventus this summer. Spalletti will surely stick around until the end of the season, and his only realistic goal is — yet another — top four finish. Will that be enough to save his job and get him another year with the Bianconeri? Time will tell.
Parting Shot of the Week
It really is remarkable how quickly the wheels fell off for Juve this season. In previous years, there was at least a smidge of relevancy at this point in the season. Keep it in single digits in Serie A at least, Coppa run, something.
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The facts are the facts, though. European malaise has been constant, but domestic irrelevance is surely new territory for Juventus in nearly 20 years years. And, look, a nine-year title run was always going to be impossible to follow up — we knew this. But Juventus hasn’t even made it interesting the last few years and it looks like the 2025-26 season is more of the same.
I urge you to do something else with your weekends for the time being. Hang out with your significant other, take a walk, read a book. Unless three months of playing out the string is appealing to you, in which case, go right ahead.
See you next time.