Following Sunday’s scoreless draw with Max Allegri and AC Milan, these two things are true about Juventus …
- Juve have not lost a game during the six-game stretch of fixtures between the September international break and the October international break.
- Juve have not won a game in over three weeks since the wild comeback against Inter Milan in the Derby d’Italia that started the post-international break slate of fixtures.
This is where things stand after when happened in Allegri’s first game back at the Allianz Stadium following his departure from the club he coached to five Serie A titles and a couple of Champions League final appearances. The state of the current squad doesn’t exactly feel all that much better than when Allegri left — and that was proof once again on Sunday as Juve struggled with more inconsistencies
up front in the final third as well as errors that nearly cost them dearly and could have seen them suffer their first defeat of the 2025-26 season.
Plus, it always helps when your opponent misses a penalty like Christian Pulisic did in the 53rd minute to keep the game scoreless and give Juventus a chance to actually get the win over the subsequent 30-plus minutes.
But again, Juventus were far from a consistently threatening side against Allegri’s squad that has put up some impressive defensive numbers ever since their season-opening defeat against Cremonese. Whether it was that big Jonathan David stumble in the first half that saw one of Juve’s few chances up to that point go for naught or Mike Maignan’s big close-range save on Federico Gatti, it’s not like Igor Tudor’s side was putting a ton of pressure on the Milan defense.
Just on the face of it, is a draw against an in-form Milan side like they are right now a necessarily bad thing? No, despite Juve’s recent success in this matchup between the two historic rivals.
But when you pile on draw after draw after draw after draw and now a fifth straight draw, it becomes a little worrisome to say the least.
This Juventus team doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s made the progress that Tudor is saying they have from the last-gasp win over Inter to now this draw against Milan. It’s been a run n which the weaknesses and shortcomings of this squad have felt more prominent than what they’ve done consistently well. They are a combination of tired, not on the same page, basically whatever you can think of right now.
On this night, a predictably cagey matchup proved to be exactly that. Both teams struggled for a large swaths of the game to get attacking momentum going, with Juve really only having to sustain a big Milan push coming both before and after the PK miss by Pulisic. Other than that, it’s not like either goalkeeper was very busy, although both Maignan and Michele Di Gregorio had to make a few big saves apiece.
Ultimately, this night will be remembered more for what either team was unable to do in the final third more than anything else. That is especially true for a Juventus side that just feels like it’s still without too many ideas other than “Kenan Yildiz and/or Francisco Conceição need to do something cool for us to score.” Neither David nor the man who came on for him, Dusan Vlahovic, were all that involved at all. The best player on the field Sunday night was probably the oldest one, who is just out there casually dropping dimes to set up scoring chances for teammates in the 90th minute like it’s nothing.
There’s a lot for Tudor to think about during these next two weeks of the international break — especially since the later part of October isn’t going to get any easier domestically and in Europe.
No matter what, though, this will be a 90 or so minutes in which we can all probably say we will want to forget about as soon as possible during the international break. At least that’s how I feel all about that.
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS
- Don’t look now, but with Sunday night’s result Juventus officially have as many draws in Serie A as they do wins this season.
- Somewhere in Europe, Thiago Motta sits back and probably thinks a few things to himself looking at that record.
- But hey, at least Juve got a clean sheet, right?
- That’s the first one of those since the final day of August. That’s nearly six weeks! That’s a long time.
- David will get a lot of stick for that first-half miss he had — and rightfully so. That doesn’t mean it was an easy thing he had to do, essentially having to try and get around the ball by moving his body backwards and it clearly was his downfall from there as he somehow got airborne. Not saying I forgive him for it, just trying to figure out just how the hell it actually happened.
- I want to take you back to both of the yellow cards that Juve received in the second half and tell you just how preventable they were. The first came after Andrea Cambiaso totally brainfarted away a free kick on the left wing and basically forced Manuel Locatelli into a tactical foul and card. Then about 25 minutes later, Gatti had a poor giveaway and then chased down a Milan player to earn a card himself. See? Totally preventable. They didn’t need to happen — and yet they did. Sometimes, you just need a few moments to sum up how this squad plays a good amount of the time, and these were it.
- Daniele Rugani was thrust into the starting lineup — his first start for Juve in a year and a half! — and pretty much did exactly what he needed to do. That’s the Rugani I know and appreciate even if he’s never lived up to the hype from a decade or so ago.
- That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see Bremer in there against Como two weeks from now. I want him to be healthy, happy and playing well because this team needs that desperately.
- It wasn’t a surprise that Allegri got a warm reception before kickoff, but it’s still very nice to see.
- You know who didn’t? Adrien Rabiot, who got a good amount of whistles form the curva after his first shot attempt of the night went flying well over the Juve goal. One of these guys is not like the other.
- Kenan Yildiz with his second relatively quiet game of the week. He attempted just one shot, which was blocked, and was subbed off in the 69th minute. (Nice?) Tudor himself said afterward that Yildiz was looking tired. The kid is tired! He’s played a ton of minutes already this season after a 2024-25 season in which he also played a ton of minutes as a teenager. Just because he’s 20 doesn’t mean he’s invisible to fatigue — and it’s showing.
- Vlahovic, who came on for Yildiz in the three-man attack switcheroo, touched the ball all of six times.
- David, who also part of that three-man swap, touched the ball a total of 16 times.
- What I’m trying to say here is that Juve’s two main strikers barely saw any of the ball against Milan.
- To his credit, though, even though Vlahovic didn’t see much of the ball at all after coming on he did try and will his teammates to push forward more and try and get something going. It didn’t work, but he tried.
- I’m still not convinced in regard to Pierre Kalulu being Juve’s main wingback on the right.
- Weston McKennie had three or four half-chances in the first half where a touch here or there just let him down and you can’t help but wonder what could have happened if even one of those went just a little better.
- Di Gregorio didn’t look completely convincing in goal against Milan, but he made that big save on Rafa Leao late in the game so I guess I am able to forgive him a little bit.
- Ah, right. That Lloyd Kelly. That’s now two penalties he’s given away in a couple of weeks.
- If you were to compare Cambiaso’s form in the current day to 12 months ago, there would be a pretty wide gap in terms of how he’s playing. He just looks so much worse than the player who started the 2024-25 campaign so well.
- There was a point in this game where Luka Modric was marking Yildiz a couple of times and that means you had a 20-year-old trying to get past a 40-year-old and it was the latter who shut things down to force a corner.
- We got a classic Max Allegri reaction late in this one when he started taking out his frustration regarding his team’s finish on the top of his head. Never change, Max. You’re one of a kind.
- After the last few weeks, I feel like a two-week break from watching Juventus will probably do a lot of us a good amount of good mental health. It’s just too bad somebody like Yildiz can’t just go to Sardinia or something for a few days, not have to worry about ball at all and just enjoy the beach for as long as he wants. Instead, it’s off to national team duty for many of these guys when they desperately need some rest.
