Even with the less-than-impressive outing on Sunday night against Cagliari, Juventus still had a chance to win. Maybe if Elia Caprile doesn’t become the latest opposing goalkeeper to put in a Man of the Match performance against Juventus. Or maybe if Randal Kolo Muani sees his shot go a couple of inches lower rather than clang off the crossbar. Or maybe something that doesn’t involve Juve not finishing the chances they did have.
No matter how it all played out, it was another case of Juve falling
behind and not being able to flip the score in their favor. And that is something that has 14 consecutive times in Luciano Spalletti’s tenure as Juventus manager after Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Cagliari — a worrying trend amongst many unsettling things that have played out over the last year since Spalletti took over for Igor Tudor in the final hours of October.
During Spalletti’s 11 1/2 months in charge now, Juventus have recorded all of two comeback victories:
- Nov. 25, 2025 against Bodø/Glimt
- Nov. 29, 2025 against Cagliari
That’s it, folks. That’s the list. A grand total of two wins in 16 situations in which a comeback from being down at least one goal was necessary to claim the win and the points that came with it. Instead, in eight of those 14 instances, Juventus went on to lose, with the other six seeing them get a draw, including Sunday’s against Cagliari. It’s a sign of the current state of Juventus is not a great one.
But what does it also say about this team?
Their mentality, one where the club motto is well-known to anybody who is even remotely familiar with its history, is not up to the levels in which it should be. It also is a reflection on the manager that he is not able to get this team both in a position to not fall behind time and time again but also isn’t able to get his team into the kind of mindset to actually complete a comeback.
And it’s not like these things have happened against big-name Serie A or European clubs, either.
There’s Inter Milan, Napoli (under Antonio Conte), Roma and Milan on this list, but also relegation-threatened or mid-table teams like Fiorentina, Hellas Verona and last season’s version of Cagliari that finished in 14th place. There’s also, as we all would like to forget, the first leg of the Champions League play-off round against Galatasaray in Istanbul that went from a 2-0 lead to the total opposite of that in a hurry.
Yes, it is still very much early in the season, but the fact that this trend is still a thing after last year’s issues makes you wonder just when any improvement will happen on this front, if it actually does.
And if it doesn’t, then Juventus’ chances of making it back into the top four and qualifying for the Champions League will become that much tougher. With somebody else probably as the manager, too.
