Well, it’s hard to post the worst Juventus winless stretch since the 2008-09 season — that’s 16 years for all of you counting at home — and not face consequences. So, Igor Tudor, we hardly knew ye.
After
eight winless games — five straight draws and then losses to Como, Real Madrid and finally Lazio — Juventus fired Tudor less than three months into the 2025-26 season, with the team in seventh place in Serie A and out of the Champions League play-off spots because they have just two points after their first three European fixtures. Despite a dead cat bounce win against Udinese on Wednesday night, this is a team that is decidedly worse off now than it was the year before and the year before that and even maybe the year before that.
Luciano Spalletti will now take over Juventus, and at this point to make a prediction about how he will do is essentially fool’s gold. Juventus have tried established coaches in Max Allegri and Maurizio Sarri. They’ve tried the hot, up and coming manager in Thiago Motta and even former players with varying degrees of experience and success in Andrea Pirlo and the now-departed Tudor. The results have remained frustratingly the same.
Good luck, Mister Spalletti, you will need it.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
At some point, grinta and Juventinita will only take you so far.
Tudor was an excellent defender in his playing days and I’m sure many fans will choose to remember him that way. He is also a mediocre coach who has been unable to stick around with any club for more than one season in over 10 years as a manager. As a manager, Tudor has won one trophy — the Croatian Cup in 2013 — in his entire career. A slam dunk signing he was not.
Tudor was a shock to the system after the disastrous Motta era and managed to turn the ship around just enough to secure a fourth-place finish and qualification to the Champions League after taking charge in March. However, the team never really took a step forward outside of escaping the malaise that was plaguing them under the previous regime. Much of the same issues that have continued to plague Juventus remained under Tudor and the ill-timed Club World Cup in the summer did little to assuage any of those concerns as the Bianconeri were thoroughly outclassed by both Manchester City and Real Madrid in the summer competition.
In fact, you could make the argument the only reason Tudor stuck around was because of the Club World Cup. Due to its proximity to the end of the season and Juventus not wanting to go into the competition with an interim coach, Tudor used his leverage to secure himself a contract for another year, as he stated loud and clear in the press he wouldn’t manage in the CWC if he wasn’t going to be the coach moving forward.
And, look, kudos to Tudor for his savvy negotiation tactics, but considering he wasn’t the first choice of new general manager Damien Comolli and the fact they tried to find a new coach like crazy during the summer before settling for Tudor, he had to know his leash was going to be short. It ended up being all of three months long.
Now, Comolli gets a clean slate to bring in his chosen guy, much like Cristiano Giuntoli did after sacking Allegri and how Andrea Agnelli and Maurizio Arrivabene did by bringing Allegri back in the first place.
You could argue Tudor got a bit of a raw deal, but the reality is he did little to help his cause. Outside of a thrilling victory over Inter Milan las month, this wasn’t a team that played consistently or very well. They struggled to generate offense, leaked goals in bunches and were just not really good at anything.
Thanks for the — admittedly few — memories, Igor.
Meet the new boss
Spalletti, last seen bottling the early stages of Italy’s World Cup qualification campaign, is now the man tapped to lead Juventus moving forward. The terms of the deal are apparently a contract for the rest of the season with an automatic renewal if Juventus gets into the Champions League next season — which feels like a reasonable deal for both sides.
Spalletti has a long and storied career. He found success as Roma’s manager in the mid- to late-2000s, winning a couple of Italian Cups before making a jump to Russian giant Zenit St. Petersburg where he won two Russian league titles as well. Spalletti came back to Italy managing Roma and Inter Milan, before catching lightning in a bottle and winning the Scudetto with Napoli in absolutely dominant fashion during the 2022-23 season.
(Do not sleep on his 2016-17 campaign with Roma. The Galliorossi, finished only four points behind one of the best Juventus teams of the century, scored 13 more goals and finished with a better goal differential. One of those if-you-know-ball-you-remember teams.)
At least in terms of his résumé, Spalletti is the most accomplished coach Juventus has hired since Allegri 2.0. His last club side was not only an absolute steamroller in Serie A —- Napoli won the league that year by a whooping 16 points — but also played a tremendously entertaining brand of football anchored by breakout seasons from Victor Osimhen and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who combined to score 45 goals.
While his stint as the Italian national team manager has to be considered a disappointment, given that Italy has not made a World Cup since 2014 (!!!) it’s hard to completely pin the Italian failures on Spalletti alone. The optimist in me wants to believe that given his tremendous recent success at the club level, perhaps the veteran Italian manager can be the one to finally exploit the offensive talent in this team that despite looking great on paper, continues to be entirely theoretical.
Despite how ugly it looks to see Juventus in seventh place in Serie A table, it’s still very early and they are all of three points away from the top four. Same goes for the Champions League, thanks to the new league phase format, Juventus are one win away from sneaking right back into the play-off round spots. Comolli and Co. had a quick hook for Tudor and this season is still very far from being a lost year for the Bianconeri.
(Although, I will stand by my take that they shouldn’t have caved at all during the summer negotiation process and not hired Tudor long term in the first place. Spalletti was canned in early June, you could have played the Mickey Mouse Invitational with an interim, get very similar results and sign Sppalleti once the tournament was over. The Spalletti hypothetical is entirely 20/20, the Tudor take is not.)
At some point, even by sheer dumb luck, Juventus will hit again on a coach. I see no reason why that can’t be Spalletti. Maybe he gets a matching Scudetto tattoo with Juventus? Crazier things have happened!
See you next time.
