The Old Lady has finally croaked. Juventus have failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League for the first time in eight years today as they lost 4-3 to Benfica, cementing their place at the bottom of Group H.
What a mess Juventus has become. Does anyone remember the Summer of 2018 and the Summer of 2019 when Juventus splashed their cash on big signings, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Adrien Rabiot, Matthijs de Ligt, Joao Cancelo, Danilo, Leonardo Bonucci (who was more of a resigning), Douglas Costa, Aaron Ramsey, Emre Can, etc., in a bid to finally make themselves European Champions again.
I know it may seem like a crazy idea now, but back in those two summer transfer windows, Juventus was truly one of the global powers of European Football. Not only were coming off their second Champions League Final loss in 2017 (2015: Barcelona, 2017: Real Madrid), but they also were the 7X (soon to be 9X) successive reigning champions of Serie A.
Surely, there was no way Juve were not about to go on and dominate European football with this ‘superteam’ they assembled? Right?
Well, if you watched them get utterly humiliated by Benfica today and Maccabi Haifai last matchday, then you would know that they didn’t. In fact, they failed spectacularly.
Now, I don’t want to get deep into the fall of Juventus (for now) as it is a long, complicated tale, but I do want to point out how stupid it was by Juventus’ Club Director and Vice Chairman Pavel Nedved and Juventus President Andrea Agnelli to sign that list of players.
Why? It’s because they all were either too old, too injury-prone, too self-serving, or a mismatch from the beginning to the winning formula that helped Juventus win nine consecutive Serie A titles.
Everything about those winning Juventus teams, such as the stellar goaltending from Italian legend Gianluigi Buffon, the rock-solid defense from Giorgio Chiellini, Leonardo Bonucci, and Andrea Barzagli, the midfield maestro of Andrea Pirlo, Auturo Vidal, Claudio Marchisio, and a young Paul Pogba, to a rotation of great strikers such as Gonzalo Higuain, Carlos Tevez, and Alvaro Morata (he was great during his first Juve spell), was uprooted to fit Nedved and Agnelli’s ‘new Juventus’ vision.
Actually, it’s more like a nightmare now.
Sure, some pieces of that team needed to be replaced, such as Buffon, Chiellini, Pirlo, Barzagli, and Tevez’s becoming too old, while adding a great striker like Cristiano Ronaldo can never hurt, but why did Nedved and Agnelli feel the need to destroy everything about their winning formula. For pride? For something more sinister?
The midfield that once consisted of Pirlo, Pogba, Marchisio, and Vidal is now filled by sub-par, inadequate, self-serving hacks that are not at the standard of a Juventus player. Meanwhile, the defense has become stagnate and decrepit as players like Chellini and Bonucci were kept in the starting team too long, while young talents (like Matthijs de Ligt) were either kept on the bench or sold to rivals.
And the offense isn’t something to boast about either.
There’s a reason why teams like Inter Milan, Napoli, and AC Milan have all of a sudden become resurgent once again. The incompetence of Nedved and Agnelli lead to the decline of Juventus, which in turn allowed their rivals to rebuild and overtake their place in the world of European and Italian football.
Yes, Juventus have now even fallen from their plateau in Italy as they have not only failed to win Serie A in the past two seasons, but they are now languishing in 8th place and are a full 10 points behind league leaders Napoli after only 11 games.
And, even though Nedved and Agnelli have tried to rekindle their old formula by rehiring Max Allegri, this Benfica loss and subsequent demotion to the Europa League proves that the Old Lady’s rot has fully set in.
I’ll write some more involved pieces about Juve in the future, but I had to get something out now with this Benfica loss so fresh. It’s really sad to see how this great club has fallen so low in such a short amount of time.
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