Unless you’ve been living under a rock the size of Gleison Bremer’s incredibly broad shoulders, you probably already know that Juventus’ last two outings have been rather interesting. They’ve both included thrilling, last-minute comebacks both domestically and in Juve’s first European fixture of the season. But they’ve also shown that this team still has its flaws — but it’s not like we didn’t know that already.
The wild 4-3 win over Inter Milan this past weekend marked the first time since Max Allegri’s
first final season with Juventus that the Bianconeri have started a new campaign with nine points out of a possible nine. That was followed up all of three days later with a stoppage-time comeback against Borussia Dortmund in which Dusan Vlahovic and Lloyd Kelly were the late heroes to allow Juve to get a point in a game they had no business drawing once stoppage time got underway.
Lots of goals. Lots and lots of goals. So many goals! Lots of mistakes, too.
But they’re two results in which Juventus have certainly provided plenty of thrills as well as moments to potentially be concerned about as the first busy portion of the schedule with midweek fixtures gets going.
So what’s been good and what’s been not-so-good during this two-game stretch of impressive goals and not-so-impressive defending? Glad you asked. Let’s take a look at a few things.
Good: The goals scored
It’s been a while since we’ve seen Juventus score a combined total of eight goals within a two-game stretch. It’s impressive even when you don’t even see how the goals were scored and who scored them.
But then when you see the goals, they’re even better.
We’ve seen Kenan Yildiz score two absolutely gorgeous goals, which feels like it’s becoming more and more of a common sight as he gets more experience under his belt. We saw Vasilije Adžić score what has to be one of the more first senior-level goals we’ve seen from a Juve player in quite a while over the weekend. We’ve gotten not one but two goals out of Kelly, a player who up until this past weekend had been thought of more for things he hadn’t done in a Juve shirt rather than providing big game-changing moments.
Plus, the impact Vlahovic made off the bench against Borussia Dortmund. That’s pretty impressive.
Is expecting Juventus to score four goals every game from here on out the norm? Of course not.
But with an attacking group of players that just feels more dynamic than a season ago and Igor Tudor wanting to play a much more direct style of play compared to the guy he took over for this past March, Juve suddenly find themselves scoring goals — and absolutely worldies at that — at a rate we haven’t seen often over a two-game period.
Who knows how long it will last, but it’s at least enjoyable in the moment. Except for one thing …
Bad: The goals allowed
And long-range goals at that.
This is basically the opposite of what we saw in Juventus’ first two Serie A fixtures in which we were praising the Juve defense for a pair of shutouts and appreciating the simple fact that Bremer was back in the lineup.
The thing is, though, things have quickly changed — and not for the better.
Seven goals have been picked out of the Juventus net over the last 180 or so minutes of game action. Many of those goals — hell, almost all of them — have been of the long-range variety in which Juventus midfield and/or defense have been made to pay for not closing down their man outside of the box. It happened against Inter, it then happen again against Dortmund and Juve were made to pay because of it.
It’s been both simple bad defending by individuals as well as team defensive breakdowns to allow some of those impending goals to happen. As much as a couple of them were incredible individual efforts — see Inter’s first two goals in the Derby d’Italia — there’s also more Juve could have done to prevent some of the others.
With the team showing they can score on a more consistent basis compared to last season — I know, it’s a small sample size, but just go with it since it’s a different manager — trying to shore up the defense again has to be the biggest priority that Tudor has on his to-do list right now.
Whether Juve can actually do that and start getting shutouts again remains to be seen.
Good: Kenan Yildiz
You get to a point where you can only describe a budding star so many ways. It’s starting to feel like that for Yildiz simply because of how he’s played for much of Tudor’s time as Juventus’ manager.
And you also get the sense that this could be just the start, too.
At 20 years old, it feels pretty safe to say that Yildiz is one of the best U-21 talents in the world today. He’s not only arguably Juve’s best player at the moment, but he’s becoming the kind of player who is only getting better as time passes. Ever since the 2025-26 season began, there is just a different look to Yildiz’s game — and that is saying something based on how he played during the previous year and a half when he got his first shot at top-flight football.
The goals he’s scoring this season are fantastic. The assists he’s providing for his teammates are pretty great, too. He’s becoming more and more of the opposition’s No. 1 focus defensively, and that is not going to change any time soon as long as he keeps being a major threat every time the ball is at his feet. And despite all of that, his still out there scoring banger after banger and replicating goals against Borussia Dortmund like his idol Alessandro Del Piero did all those years ago.
We can worry about Yildiz and the transfer market at a more pressing time in the future. Why? Because, for now, Yildiz looks like he’ll sign a new deal with a big-time raise sooner rather than later and the club is doing whatever they can to keep their biggest asset as happy as can be.
I’m just happy Yildiz is a Juventus player in 2025 because it sure is fun to see him become such an impressive player eight in front of our eyes.
Bad: Teun Koopmeiners
This man continues to be a conundrum. He just is — and I’m rather stumped what needs to happen to see him show positive signs that he’s returning to his form from his Atalanta days.
There are plenty of theories as to why he’s still struggling to replicate that form from his final season in Bergamo. For all we know, it’s a combination of a few of those theories — or it could be something completely unrelated.
Whatever the heck it is, Koopmeiners still remains a player who doesn’t look close to the one he was when he was one of the best midfielders in. Serie A during the 2023-24 season. With Francisco Conceição out injured coming out of the international break, Tudor has shifted his formation a bit to bring on an extra midfielder in Koopmeiners. However, the results haven’t been as we have hoped.
Koopmeiners is doing a lot of work off the ball — he’s been amongst the leaders in ground covered — but that feels like one of the only positive figures to come out of the last two games for the 27-year-old Dutchman.
Tudor looks like he wants to give Koopmeiners some continuous run to try and get some confidence going again. And you can understand why because there is still a good player in there somewhere. It’s just a matter of it will actually show its face again soon, or if the same kind of struggles we’ve seen for much of the last 12 months only continue to roll on as we approach 2026.
Good: Contract Year Vlahovic
Who saw this one?
Because you can count me as though who didn’t.
Maybe that’s just me thinking it was going to be more of the same from Vlahovic that we’ve seen for much of the last couple of years. He would have good moments, but the full picture told us he was a player who wasn’t living up to his lofty, Serie A-high salary that he got when he moved from Fiorentina nearly four years ago. (Not that it’s his fault Juve’s former management team led by Fabio Paratici gave him that contract. That was one of his final gifts before he left Turin and headed over to Tottenham.)
But when you play well, you deserve the kudos that come with it. And Vlahovic is certainly in that camp.
Vlahovic, for whatever reason, has taken to this super sub-like role. All of his goals this season have come when he’s been an option off the bench for Tudor. His performance against Inter wasn’t great, but that was more down to how isolated up front — he only had 14 touches total! — rather than his own doing.
Hell, he even scored with his weaker right foot on the goal that pulled Juve within one and started the unthinkable comeback in stoppage time against Dortmund. That deserves some props right there.
For a player who many of us — maybe all of us? — didn’t expect to even still be a Juventus player at this point, it’s pretty impressive to just see him go out and ball. I don’t know how long this will last with Vlahovic, but it sure is fun to watch compared to the alternative where he’s all grumpy on the field because he just missed a sitter.
(Kinda) Bad: Jonathan David’s so-so start
Look, this is not a pressing of the panic button of anything close to it. Since preseason training began in late July, David hasn’t even been with his new teammates for three months. That means we’re still very much at the infancy stage of a talented player trying to develop a rapport with his new squad — and especially with an attacking group that saw a good amount of change over the summer.
But after his goal in the season-opening win over Parma, David has been rather quiet.
Of course, with Vlahovic scoring as much as he has, it’s offset David’s output thus far if you want to think about it that way. But I guess that’s trying to spin it into a little bit better of a light, so maybe you won’t follow that line of thinking. Either way, David has not been a hugely productive player during his first few games in bianconero.
The good thing is that he is still contributing even if he isn’t getting a ton of scoring chances. That’s evident by the fact that he got the assist on Adžić‘s stunning game-winner against Inter. You just hope that he could get more chances in front of goal or put away the chances that he does get. (Because he is getting them.)
It’s still very early in David’s time in Turin, and there’s still a lot to like about the résumé he brings with him to Turin. We’re just waiting for that player to be on display because it will just add even more to a dangerous attack.
Good: The fight this team has shown
Tudor put it rather simply after Tuesday night’s draw with Dortmund: “It’s a great feeling to see that we never give up.”
Yeah, it was. It really, really was.
We saw that kind of fight a few times during the short Thiago Motta era. But twice within a matter of three or four days? Nah, I don’t think so. A good portion of the time last season, if there was a big result that went Juve’s way — or even the big comeback at the San Siro against Inter last October — we saw it followed up by another draw and disappointing performance.
Now, while in some ways the draw with Dortmund is disappointing because of how Juve played for a good portion of the second half, the fight back after falling behind 4-2 can’t be ignored. The way they got behind was rough, but the way that they fought back and ultimately tied the game with one of the last kicks of the ball was quite the spectacle.
It’s not the way you want to see Juventus try and get points every time.
But it’s the kind of way you want to see Juventus fight back when they need to do just that.
This is one of the things that we thought Tudor might truly improve with this squad — the spirit, the unity, the know how of what it means to play for a club like Juventus. He knows this club, he knows what it took to be a part of this team when things were much, much better. Now he’s trying to get that across as manager.
Bad: The worry about “sustainability”
Maybe it’s the buzz word these days with how this team is playing over the last couple of games. I know I’ve mentioned it a few times over the last few days — and probably because it’s the default kind of way my mind goes when I see Juventus play with fire and walk the tight rope
But it remains true. Juventus have played a couple of absolutely insane games with multiple late-game comebacks to get a win and then a draw when neither of those results looked possible.
Both the short- and long-term ability to play these kinds of wild and turbulent games, not the best of ways to go about things.
That’s something Tudor surely knows — especially with the way the Dortmund matchup went and how things turned in the second half compared to how little the German side did before halftime. Juve barely allowed Dortmund to do much of anything in the opening 45 minutes … then all hell broke loose and it became a second half where eight goals were scored.
For all we know, these could be just a couple of unique situations in which the craziness just overwhelms and consumes all involved and the result is what we’ve seen over the past two games. The fear, of course, is that these kinds of games become all the more common and Juventus are suddenly having to claw back late in the same kind of way that somebody like Liverpool has operated over the first month or so of the 2025-26 season.
The fighting spirit within the squad is great, yes. But the need for stoppage-time heroics much more often than not maybe isn’t the kind of scenario that Tudor wants to see play out as he tries to show he’s the right man for the job.
