Things were looking good for Juventus at halftime of the first leg of the UEFA Champions League playoff round against Galatasaray. They’d responded to falling behind in less than 90 seconds, and had come all the way back to take a 2-1 lead into the locker rooms.
The less said about what happened when they emerged from those locker rooms, the better.
After a complete meltdown, Juve go into the second leg down 5-2. I wouldn’t quite say they need a miracle to come back in this tie, but needing a three-goal
win to merely send the tie to extra time is certainly a mountain to climb.
What happened in the second half? How did each player perform individually? Let’s take a closer look.
MICHELE DI GREGORIO – 5. Didn’t have the usual command of his box, and his touch on Galatasaray’s equalizer was pretty weak. Sacha Boey’s goal to finish things off might’ve also been something he should’ve stopped. Certainly not his best today.
PIERRE KALULU – 6. Played solidly on his side and racked up three tackles and four clearances. Made some good runs when Juve were going forward in the first half, the best of which being the one that saw his header met by a fantastic save from Ugurcan Çakir, leading to Teun Koopmeiners’ equalizer.
BREMER – 6. Played well and kept old foe Victor Osimhen on the periphery for most of his time on the pitch. He took a huge risk by staying on the field after he felt that hamstring go, and it’s a huge relief that he reportedly won’t miss much time. As we’ve seen the last year and a half, without him this defense loses quality by an order of magnitude.
LLOYD KELLY – 5. Was a bit overwhelmed by Osimhen once he became his primary responsibility. I don’t give him so much blame for the turnover that led to Gala’s fourth goal—he’d just been given a hospital ball by Khéphren Thuram—but he was completely outmuscled by the Nigeria international on the fifth.
ANDREA CAMBIASO – 5.5. Put in the ball that led to the equalizer—and what a ball it was, after showing a flash of that old skill in getting through a tackle to deliver it—but he struggled all night with Baris Yilmaz on his flank. His yellow card was inevitable, and in a lot of circumstances he would’ve gotten a second a few minutes after Juve took the lead, but the referee, correctly, I’d say, deemed his contact with Yilmaz’s face to be incidental. That yellow puts him over the suspension threshold for the second leg.
KHÉPHREN THURAM – 4. Made a single key pass but barely completed 70 percent of his overall attempts, and his brain fart of a pass back into his own box led to this match getting out of hand. A game he’d like to forget.
MANUEL LOCATELLI – 5. Didn’t find his footing passing the ball, and his defense was surprisingly muted given his usual work. Improvement from him is vital to any faint hopes of a comeback.
TEUN KOOPMEINERS – 6.5. After not contributing to a goal all year, he pulls out two at a time when the team really needed them. His second one in particular is the kind of hit that Juve expected a lot of when they paid for him. If this starts pointing him upwards, it would be a huge boon.
FRANCISCO CONCEIÇÃO – 5. Got the ball in decent positions on the right a few times but simply didn’t do much of anything with them, which has become a trend. Did have one nice curler that went a little bit wide that could’ve made it 3-1. He’s got to find more end product, or the comparisons with Milos Krasic will start coming thicker and faster.
WESTON McKENNIE – 6. Didn’t play as a pure striker, especially after the red, but in the first half he was effective at pulling an overeager Davinson Sánchez out of position to create lanes for runners. His one-two pass with Koopmeiners for Juve’s second goal was beautiful. He even ended up leading the team in blocks once they were pressed back.
KENAN YILDIZ – 5.5. Looked tired and a little bit gimpy, grabbing at his ankle and knee a lot after an early tackle. Had one nice-looking shot that was deflected behind, and did come up with four dribbles and three key passes, but his oomph was missing.
SUBS
FEDERICO GATTI – 4.5. Blocked a pair of shots but never seemed to be in a groove. Didn’t look on the same page with Kelly, who he’s never played next to in this particular system.
JUAN CABAL – 2. I started doing these ratings full-time in the 2017-18 season, and I had never given anything below a 3 until now—and that included the game where instead of talking about how bad Leonardo Bonucci had been I just added a GIF of a dumpster on fire. This was an absolute farce of a performance. He fared even worse than Cambiaso did against Yilmaz, with his mistakes directly leading to two of the four goals Galatasaray scored in the second half. Got two yellows in an eight-minute span after being sent on to protect Cambiaso from the same fate.
FILIP KOSTIC – 5.5. Basically served as a body attempting to keep Galatasaray from running even more riot. It’s not really his fault, once he came on Gala completely dominated things, and he never had any opportunity to do anything with the ball. He only got to attempt five passes.
FABIO MIRETTI – NR. Here’s how bad it got by the end: Miretti had almost as many clearances in 11 minutes (3) as Locatelli did in the entire match (4).
LOÏS OPENDA – NR. Tried to find any sort of space to try to charge through the Gala defense, but only touched the ball four times.
MANAGER ANALYSIS
It looked as though Luciano Spalletti had really thought this through after losing Jonathan David to injury in the lead-up to this game. McKennie looked as good as any false nine could have in the first half, and the team deserved their lead at the break.
Everything went wrong in the second half. I’ve praised what Spalletti has done from the mental side of things for this team for weeks, but whether it was the pressure of the moment, the pressure of the crowd—which was absolutely seething—or the pressure on the field as Galatasaray ramped up the pressure in the second half, they collapsed. Even in the first half we saw some mental errors, like Yildiz’s turnover that led to the first goal. Hopefully this will be a learning experience for some of the younger players, but, as Spalletti said postgame, they’re in an arena where they have to play spot-on to get things done, and the second half was anything but.
Spalletti isn’t immune to criticism either. When the game was still on Gala were showing some holes that Juve might’ve been able to shoot a counterattack through—the kind of game that Openda’s skill set is made for. But by the time he actually put the Belgian on, the horses weren’t just out of the barn, they were in another farm the next county over. It was clear that the game had been shifting to the hosts even before Cabal was sent off, and it felt like there needed to be a shift earlier than there was. Perhaps Spalletti was gun-shy because he only had two sub windows left after Bremer had had to give way in the first half. Regardless, this was one of those games we’ve seen on occasion where Spalletti simply doesn’t read it well, or if he has he hasn’t acted properly.
He’s going to have some shifting to do with both Cambiaso and Cabal out for the second leg (and Cabal would’ve been suspended anyway because the first card put him over the suspension threshold). He’ll need to hope he gets some players back—especially Bremer—in order to pull off something special and get back into this tie.
LOOKING AHEAD
Galatasaray come to the J Stadium for the second leg on Wednesday. In order to have any hope of advancing, Juve will need to win that game by at least three goals.
Before that, Como come to town, and Juve will look to avenge their loss from earlier in the season and keep their pace in the race for the top four, with a big showdown at Roma looming after the second leg.
