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Tag: Max Allegri

  • Juventus Need A Youth Movement, And The Kids Have Proven They Are Alright

    Juventus Need A Youth Movement, And The Kids Have Proven They Are Alright

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    Out of the mother of necessity comes invention, as the saying goes. For Max Allegri and Juventus, this means giving youth a chance.

    Juventus, as of the last two decades, haven’t been a team renowned for bleeding through youngsters. In fact, The Old Lady has more than lived up to the ‘old’ part in their nickname, signing players in their late 20s to early 30s. Cristiano Ronaldo was 33 when he become the club’s most expensive signing ever at €100m ($103m). The previous holder of that crown was Gonzalo Higuain, when Juve signed him from Napoli aged 28 and seven months for €90m ($93m).

    Only Claudio Marchisio has succeeded in breaking into the first team on a regular basis in the 21st century, a damming indictment of Juve’s mentality. The club’s mantra of ‘winning isn’t important, it’s the only thing that matters’ demands instant results, which generally means not having the patience to develop and nurture young talent. ‘You produce them, and we’ll buy them’ is generally Juve’s attitude to talent.

    Yet this season, Allegri has had no alternative than to turn to youth. Nicolo Fagioli and Fabio Miretti have been thrust into the spotlight due to the alarming number of injuries Juve have suffered this season. Miretti has played nearly 600 minutes in Serie A this season, alternating between a central midfielder and an attacking midfielder.

    Fagioli has had to be a little bit more patient with his opportunities, but he’s certainly made the most of them. His 73rd minute curler against Lecce in Puglia brought three points back to Turin that didn’t look close to arriving before Allegri brought him on. In the Derby d’Italia, he made sure of all three points, smashing home the second after being played through by Filip Kostic with five minutes remaining.

    Injuries to Angel Di Maria, Paul Pogba and Leandro Paredes has forced Allegri’s hand, but the pair of youngsters have proved they are up to the task of playing for Italy’s biggest side. In one sense, Allegri has had little to lose in giving them game time over the past several weeks. The club are out of the Champions League and a crack at the Scudetto is also out of the question after a horrendous three months. The kids could hardly do any worse than the more experienced pros had already done.

    Samuel Iling-Jnr was also thrust into the spotlight by Allegri, first in the final 20 minutes against Benfica in Lisbon and against Lecce, and the English winger played with a refreshing directness, not to mention speed, that has been sorely missing in this Juve side for years. He provided an assist for Arkadiusz Milik in Lisbon and played a role in Fagioli’s curler down in Puglia. Only an injury to the 19-year-old’s ankle has kept him from featuring in the last several games. In light of the flashes of promise he’s shown, Juve are keen to tie him down with a new contract.

    With the club posting astronomical financial losses for the 2021-22 season, to the tune of some €254m ($263m), and in light of their early exit from the Champions League, Juve’s overall finances are in dire shape. The days of splashing massive money on players like Ronaldo and Higuain are finished, and even if the club manage to qualify for the Champions League next season, money will be scarce. The likes of Juan Cuadrado, Alex Sandro and Adrien Rabiot are likely to leave the club at the end of the season when their contracts expire, but the saving on their wages won’t be directed into the club’s transfer budget. The future of the club lies in pushing through youth like Fagioli, Miretti, Iling-Jnr, Federico Gatti and Matias Soule – another player who has benefitted from the injury crisis.

    Once the likes of Pogba, Paredes and Weston McKennie all return from injury, Allegri is likely to return to the status quo, but Paredes’ future at Juve isn’t secure past May, and McKennie could be offloaded should a suitable offer come in next summer.

    If ever Juve needed to believe in a youth movement, the time is now. With a nucleus of players that includes the likes of Dusan Vlahovic, Federico Chiesa, Manuel Locatelli and Bremer all 25 and under, but already with vast experience in Serie A, players like Fagioli, Miretti, Iling-Jnr, Gatti and Soule can reinforce a new, hungrier Juventus over the coming years, one that relies less on buying ready made superstars on massive wages and more on potential promise.

    The club need to adapt more of a Milan approach, especially with the club’s debt at record-breaking levels, than the current and chaotic philosophy. The Juve kids have shown they are alright, and the injury crisis may just be the best thing that’s happened to the club in a long time.

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    Emmet Gates, Contributor

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  • Juventus FC’s Decline Began With Cristiano Ronaldo

    Juventus FC’s Decline Began With Cristiano Ronaldo

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    In the end, Juventus FC coach Max Allegri just apologized.

    “We are sorry and angry,” he told the media after the Italian giants exited the Champions League with a 4-3 defeat against Benfica, “the team finished well so it’s not a physical matter. We must continue working.”

    “We are disappointed […] because we are out of the Champions League. Now we have to focus on the league and also remain focused against Paris [Saint-Germain] because we have at least to book a place in the Europa League.”

    Switching attention to the league might be a welcome relief if the club was performing well but, unfortunately for Allegri, form has been just as patchy in Serie A. The club lies in eighth place and 10 points off leaders Napoli.

    It was not supposed to go like this.

    After the failed experiments with Maurizio Sarri, supposed to bring titles and stylish soccer to Turin, and Andrea Pirlo, an exciting young coach believed capable of building a dynasty, the Bianconeri returned to the man who delivered five straight league titles and two Champions League finals.

    But so far Allegri has been unable to rebuild the winning machine that once dominated the Italian league.

    It would be unfair, however, to place all the blame at the manager’s door.

    As CBS pundit Thierry Henry told viewers after the game, the issues went a lot further. “It’s very difficult to call out a manager,” he said, “I think there’s a lot of problems from top to bottom. It’s not only at the bottom and on the field that things aren’t not going well,

    “I said it when Pirlo left. I said it when Sarri left. It’s not a bad coach. You need to be able to coach also. Now what’s happening behind closed doors, we don’t know. But like I said, it takes time sometimes. It’s not because you bring Allegri that it’s going to work.”

    So where did Juventus’ problems begin and how did the club go from being an established part of the European elite to a side clinging to the top tier by its fingernails?

    Well, there’s a strong argument that the tipping point was the ill-fated signings of one of the world’s greatest players; Cristiano Ronaldo.

    The curse of CR7

    In the summer of 2018, Juventus decided the way to turn their Champions League near misses into a win was with Cristiano Ronaldo, the player who’d won four of the previous five titles with Real Madrid.

    There were, of course, other commercial benefits to bringing in one of the world’s best players, but the feeling was overwhelming that, although $111 million was a large fee for a 33-year-old, the Portuguese megastar was the man who could make the difference.

    After all, this side had won seven straight league titles and twice had been 90 minutes from Champions League glory.

    In the first season, Ronaldo was the top scorer as Juve made it eight Serie A trophies in a row. But something strange happened in the Champions League.

    Despite it looking like the draw was opening up for the Italians after they dispatched Atletico Madrid, the Bianconeri suffered a shock defeat to Ajax in the quarter-finals.

    It was strange, Juventus had been in more difficult situations without Ronaldo and come out on top and, in the wake of this defeat manager, Allegri, in his first spell in charge, found himself denying suggestions they were reliant on CR7.

    “He has given us a lot over the course of the campaign, but when you reach the quarter-final, you need every player,” he said.

    When the end of the season arrived, the leadership at Juventus determined the problem was Allegri and brought in former Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri, a man with a reputation for better soccer that didn’t deliver results.

    A ninth successive title was delivered by Sarri, but the feeling Ronaldo might not fit into his high-energy tactical system was beginning to grow. In the Champions League, Juventus lost to Lyon, a side from outside the European elite whose advantage over the Italians was greater cohesion.

    This was deemed a failure and Sarri was fired. He has since revealed that CR7’s presence was challenging.

    “Ronaldo’s management is not simple, from all points of view,” Sarri said, “he is a multinational company; he has personal interests that must coincide with football.

    “His interests go beyond what is normal, beyond the team or club. I am a coach, not a manager. Ronaldo, however, brings the numbers at the end of the year. But in recent years, I hear a lot about players and little about teams.”

    After Sarri exited in the summer of 2020 the wheels fell off for Juve. Under Andrea Pirlo, the Bianconeri slumped to a fourth-place Serie A finish and continued its tradition of losing to a lesser side in the Champions League with defeat against Porto in the last-16.

    This proved the final straw for Ronaldo who, after three seasons of gradual decline, decided to return to Manchester United.

    He left a broken side.

    Previous stars, like Paulo Dybala, had regressed and the hefty $71 million annual wages had restricted the club’s ability to strengthen other areas of the team. AC Milan goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma was reportedly keen to join Juve, but the club couldn’t match the wages Paris Saint-Germain offered him while paying for CR7.

    Of course, there have been other signings that didn’t pan out during CR7’s time in Turin and the managerial chances were undoubtedly failures too.

    But you can’t help but wonder, if Juve had spent those hundreds of millions on the team would it be in a better position now?

    Not that Juventus president Andrea Agnelli has any regrets.

    “Wrong to take Ronaldo?” he told Corriere dello Sport, “Never. “I would do it again tomorrow.”

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    Zak Garner-Purkis, Contributor

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  • Predictable Juventus Lose To AC Milan: How Much Longer Can This Continue?

    Predictable Juventus Lose To AC Milan: How Much Longer Can This Continue?

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    After winning twice in a week, Juventus were brought back down to earth on Saturday evening as they were beaten 2-0 by AC Milan at San Siro. Indeed, if fans of the Bianconeri had been given hope by victories over Bologna and Maccabi Haifa, then this latest outing delivered a heavy dose of reality.

    The home side dominated this game from the outset, with two first-half efforts from Rafael Leao both hitting the post, and another seemingly deflected wide by Dušan Vlahović’s elbow.

    There would be more controversy when Milan did eventually take the lead, the referee missing a foul by Theo Hernández on Juan Cuadrado as the Rossoneri won a corner. Fikayo Tomori would net from the resulting set piece and, despite the circumstances, it was impossible to say his side didn’t deserve that lead.

    Brahim Diaz would double their advantage with a superb solo run, but with just 54 minutes gone when the Spanish midfielder struck, there was plenty of time left for the Old Lady to mount a comeback.

    Yet despite Juve controlling the ball for much of the game – statistics taken from WhoScored.com show they had 60.5% possession – there was absolutely no cutting edge to Max Allegri’s side.

    The same website shows that they managed just 10 shots to Milan’s 21, repeatedly going backwards rather than seeking an attacking advantage, as the Coach explained during his post-match interview.

    “It is strange, at a certain point we just stop playing and start to back down. After Leao hit the post, we started going backwards. And there are also some passes that are just impossible to get wrong,” Allegri told DAZN.

    “We’ve got to be more determined in the challenges and shake off our fear, as otherwise we won’t have the balance to go far this season. If we shake off the fear, we can turn things around.

    “When you pass the ball backwards, the other side will push forward and don’t even need to press you that hard. We need to work on that and improve.”

    While there is no doubt that he is right, this is a Coach who has been in charge of this team for the past 16 months and he is the one responsible for doing the “work on that” rather than being merely an observer.

    It is not good enough to repeatedly highlight the issues that anyone watching these performances can see easily enough for themselves, surely it is Allegri’s job to correct them or find solutions to overcome them?

    Instead, Saturday’s clash at San Siro saw the Juve boss tactically outwitted by Stefano Pioli. The Milan Coach tweaked his formation slightly, opting for a three-man midfield rather than his usual two-man unit, immediately flooding an area where the Bianconeri had only deployed Manuel Locatelli and Adrien Rabiot.

    It was the kind of shift that Allegri used to make himself, a simple but subtle move that could easily have been nullified, yet he did nothing but watch as Sandro Tonali, Ismaël Bennacer and Tommaso Pobega gave Milan a platform on which they could build their attacks.

    Juve repeatedly found no way beyond those superior numbers in the middle of the park, Locatelli finding the match particularly difficult as he was constantly overrun defensively and under relentless pressure whenever the Bianconeri had possession.

    It was the latest example of Allegri’s set up putting his players in position to fail, and it was a similar story in attack where the duo of Vlahović and Arkadiusz Milik might’ve had enough individual quality to secure wins over lesser opponents, but obviously offered no way through a well-organised Milan backline.

    Without the brilliance of the suspended Ángel Di María and the injured Federico Chiesa, Juve simply have no creativity, and the Coach seemingly has little idea about how to set up his team to help alleviate that.

    It continued a trend of woeful displays against top opposition since Allegri returned to Juve last May, with the tweet above highlighting just how inept the Bianconeri have been in the toughest games.

    When a team is so devoid of solutions, has no viable tactical plan and so clearly lacks self-belief, the finger must be pointed at the man responsible for instilling those things. When that man repeatedly offers none of the above, and instead simply points out the obvious problems at press conferences, you have to wonder how long he can remain at the helm.

    The Milan game didn’t just highlight the struggles Juventus are enduring, it laid bare exactly who is responsible for them. There are more crucial games ahead too, with a must-win Champions League encounter with Maccabi Haifa and the derby against Torino awaiting them this week.

    Those are followed by fixtures against Benfica, PSG, Inter and Lazio before club football stops for the World Cup, and if Max Allegri continues to fail in big matches, one wonders just how much longer the Old Lady can stand by her man.

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    Adam Digby, Contributor

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