An unexpected benefit to our new match recap format has presented itself: this article was written after the news that Igor Tudor had been sacked following the latest extension of their eight-match winless
skid. Therefore, our Manager Analysis section will serve as a bit of a post-mortem for the short-lived Tudor era.
It certainly wasn’t an advertisement for anyone employed by Juventus, especially considering the spirit that the team had shown only four days earlier against one of the best clubs in the world. How did the players fare? And what can be taken away from Tudor’s time in charge? Let’s take a look.
LE PAGELLE
MATTIA PERIN – 6. Couldn’t do anything about the deflection that took Basic’s goal past him, and otherwise did his job in a game that only saw him face two other shots on target.
PIERRE KALULU – 6. Made a team-high five clearances, and was generally solid defensively on his side.
FEDERICO GATTI – 6. Made a pair of tackles and three clearances, and kept Boulaye Dia to a single shot.
LLOYD KELLY – 5. Didn’t have a great time against Gustav Isaksen, who was the main source of danger for Lazio. Committed four fouls and lost control of the ball a bit too much.
FRANCISCO CONCEIÇÃO – 6.5. The best player in a Juventus shirt by a long way. Completed all 23 of his pass attempts, including three key passes and a team-high three dribbles. He also tacked on a pair of tackles and an interception to his stat line tracking back as well. Absolutely should have had a penalty in the first half.
TEUN KOOPMEINERS – 5. Blocked three shots but didn’t put together anything creative going forward. Will a third manager find a way to rev him up?
MANUEL LOCATELLI – 6. Excellent defensively in midfield, registering two tackles, three interceptions, and two clearances. Did his best to push a languid side in attack, and put a shot on target.
WESTON McKENNIE – 5.5. Had one key pass but couldn’t cause much in the way of problems in attack. Given the inordinate number of crosses that got launched into the box, he needed to get in there as a target more to use his heading ability.
ANDREA CAMBIASO – 5.5. Co-led the team in key passes—and in only one half—but was a liability defensively, especially when Isaksen was bearing down on him.
JONATHAN DAVID – 4. Yeah, that was bad. An astonishing error that led to the goal, and while he did have a shot from a good position smothered by Ivan Provodel, he simply didn’t have much in the way of chemistry with Vlahovic.
DUSAN VLAHOVIC – 5.5. Led the team with three shot attempts but couldn’t put any of them on target and largely operated in isolation from his strike partner. That pairing could be a dangerous one, but would need plenty more time to gel.
SUBS
KENAN YILDIZ – 5.5. Had a shot that Provodel saved that might’ve been more had he gotten it to either side. Created a little bit, but the team was far too listless even by halftime for him to inject much more into it.
FILIP KOSTIC – 6. Completed 93.8 percent of his passes and created a shot, but simply spamming crosses (seven attempts in 25 minutes) was emblematic of the team’s lack of ideas.
KHÉPHREN THURAM – 5.5. A late header was the last and maybe best chance for Juve to equalize, but he hit it weakly right at Provodel.
LOÏS OPENDA – NR. Only touched the ball three times and didn’t even attempt a pass, much less a shot.
JOÃO MÁRIO – NR. Notched a key pass in only nine touches across five minutes plus stoppages. Why was he not out there way earlier?
MANAGER ANALYSIS
This game was a microcosm of why the season under Igor Tudor ultimately fizzled after Juve’s quick start.
Lazio did not necessarily play well, and they were shot through with injuries, but they knew what they were doing and when to do it under Maurizio Sarri’s system. As we all know, Sarrismo is particular and even somewhat regimented in what it wants players to do, which forges them an identity even when they’re in a bad run of form.
By the end, it was clear that the same couldn’t be said of Tudor’s side. The vertical game that is his hallmark—and that was such a stark difference from Thiago Motta when he replaced him last year—started to ebb away from the team as the winless streak began to stretch, and ultimately Tudor was reduced to throwing together an attacking combination game by game to see if it would be the one that worked. While there were some good moments of team buildup from time to time, more often than not the players on the field looked disconnected and disjointed, not knowing what to do or what each other was doing.
By halftime on Sunday it was clear Tudor was in desperation mode, throwing on four attackers to try to make something happen. And while that sometimes worked—see the Inter game, when one player after another rattled off insane goals—the majority of the time it was sorely lacking, especially against a team that knew what it wanted to do.
In the last week, Tudor was quoted as saying that he believed mentality to be more important than tactics. And while Tudor should be commended for getting this team in better shape mentally than it’s been in years, good tactics are also a must. As the Brazil team at the 2014 World Cup showed the world in a big way, having a whole lot of feels and then hoping that that would push you to the promised land will only take you so far before you come crashing down with a resounding thump. In their last three losses, they had come up against teams with clear identities and plans, and that was able to overpower sheer emotional will.
To be sure, there are other issues at Juventus that go far beyond what the manager can affect. This club has been on a downward slope ever since Andrea Agnelli first triggered the decline by forcing Beppe Marotta out of the sporting director’s office, and successive front offices have either made the situation worse or tripped trying to pick up the pieces. Managers are usually the first casualty of such dysfunction, and Tudor is no different. But Tudor isn’t just a cheap scapegoat. He has some serious tactical flaws as a manager. The mendicant nature of his managerial career up to this point is emblematic of the fact that his methods will only end up working for a short time before falling to superior tacticians.
Tudor’s legacy at Juventus will be that he saved the ‘24-25 season after Motta hit the wall, but ultimately he would never really be able to continue that long-term given his limitations as a manager. He served well, and deserves credit where it is due, but ultimately his dismissal was likely to happen at some point in the not-too-distant future regardless.
LOOKING AHEAD
A midweek league fixture against Udinese will be overseen by NextGen coach Massimiliano Brambilla, then the Bianconeri travel to Cremona for a Saturday prime time match with Cremonese. Who will be leading the team into that match is anyone’s guess.
