The fact that we’ve spent so much time analyzing, dissecting, and generally kvetching about Juventus’ attack is kind of funny considering the Bianconeri are actually third in Serie A in goals scored this season. While champions-elect Inter Milan (barf) have run away with the league lead with 82 goals, Juve’s 58 goals are only one behind Como — one of the most vaunted and forward-thinking attacking sides in the league — for second.
However, two things can be the same at once. Juve may be high on the scoring
chart, but that doesn’t mean their attack doesn’t have weaknesses.
The one we’ve been obsessing over most — and rightly so — has been the lack of performance (or, in Dusan Vlahovic’s case, availability) from their strikers. Jonathan David has flopped in his first season away from France, and Loïs Openda has faceplanted so hard that he’s scored fewer goals than Juve have forced own goals. Vlahovic, meanwhile, went down with a significant muscle injury in November and is only now rounding into full fitness with less than a month to go in the season.
It’s always rough to not have a go-to goalscorer up front, but before that became a full-blown crisis, there was another complaint about Juve’s attack that was also quite valid: Where on earth was the creativity going to come from when Kenan Yildiz isn’t on the field?
In the early parts of the season, if Yildiz wasn’t available Juve were demonstrably less dangerous in attack. It didn’t matter if it was Igor Tudor or Luciano Spalletti in charge, the Old Lady simply didn’t have all that much inventiveness when the young Turk wasn’t there. Sometimes, it was a problem even when he was on the field as teams started to shift defenses to him and provide a constant stream of double teams to take him out of play.
There were options, but none fit the bill entirely. Francisco Conceição was plucky and speedy and not without skill, but he but lacked the repertoire to put it all to optimal use. Teun Koopmeiners seemed as if he had completely forgotten how to do much of anything as opposed to his days in Bergamo. Weston McKennie has once had a season with double-digit assists, but he’s not someone who can make something out of nothing the way Yildiz can. Edon Zhegrova looked dangerous when he was on the field but had never played more than 45 minutes at a time in a Juve shirt. Vasilije Adzic is clearly talented, but just as clearly needs more seasoning. Fabio Miretti started strong when he was finally given playing time but tailed off quickly. And Andrea Cambiaso was … yeah I don’t know what he’s been doing the last year and a half.
It all led to a frustratingly predictable attack when Yildiz wasn’t around.
And then January came around, and Juve ended up finding the answer.
Jérémie Boga had been desperately looking for a way out at Nice ever since he and several teammates had been assaulted by angry fans after a bad losing streak reached its worst results. He didn’t play on the Riviera again, and on deadline day of the January transfer window, Juventus CEO Damien Comolli scooped him up on loan. It was a good move at the time. It looks even better now.
Boga has been a revelation. After being eased in to build fitness following his extended leave in Nice, he really started having an effect in March. He scored in three straight games, and two of the goals were big. He got Juve’s comeback going in their 3-3 draw with Roma by scoring Juve’s second goal, and he scored the decisive goal in a 1-0 victory over Udinese. He was similarly the difference two weeks later, scoring the team’s lone goal in a critical win against his old club Atalanta.
The impact Boga has had on the team can’t be overstated. When Yildiz is out, they finally have a guy with the pace and inventiveness to fire up the attack in his absence. When they play together, he provides a secondary threat that finally gives managers pause when they tried to double-team him. Whether he’s out on the left wing or playing as a false nine, he’s given the team another creative outlet at a time when it was desperately needed.
As much credit as he’s deserved on the field, Comolli deserves credit for making the deal.
Juve’s first-year director was already catching flack for some of his summer signings (most notably David and Openda) but he deserves a lot of credit for picking Boga up and picking him up cheap. Juve have an option to buy the Ivorian for only €4.8 million. That’s less than a third of what Nice paid Atalanta for him in 2023 and less than a quarter of what Atalanta had paid Sassuolo for him two years earlier. Triggering that option is going to be an easy choice come summer — a valuable piece at a cut price.
Despite their high-profile transfer misses the last two years from both Comolli (the aforementioned David and Openda, plus the weird Alberto Costa/João Mario swap) and Cristiano Giuntoli (Koopmeiners, Douglas Luiz, Nico Gonzalez amongst others), there have also been some sneaky-good moves. Juventus fleeced AC Milan for Pierre Kalulu last year when they picked him up on a loan with a €15 million option to buy, and now Boga has come in for what might be an even bigger bargain.
Indeed, if Boga continues to succeed, he may end up there with Andrea Barzagli as one of the biggest transfer bargains in recent times. Barzagli, if you remember, arrived in the winter of 2011 from Wolfsburg for €500,000. All he did in the next eight years was become a part of one of the most vaunted defenses in the history of the sport. That’s obviously a high bar, but these are the kind of transfers that Juve need to find in order to fully pull themselves off the mat. Boga’s got the opportunity to make a big difference for the Juve front line in the next few years on a fee that, in this day and age, is miniscule.
Boga’s run of form spurred Juve’s recovery from seemingly out of the Champions League race to controlling their own destiny to get there. He’s provided an element of creativity that the team has sorely needed, and he was acquired in one of the club’s best pieces of business in recent times. This has been a transfer success all around for a club that’s sorely in need of one.
