Being the highly competitive person that he seems to be thanks simply to the career arc he’s been on over the last decade, Federico Gatti would surely prefer to be somebody who plays more than seven or eight minutes in Juventus’ first three games of the season. He may be a Juventino at heart, but he’s also somebody who surely isn’t content with sitting on the bench come the opening three games, only to be a Hail Mary sub in the dying minutes of the second home fixture of the season.
And yet, that
Hail Mary sure worked out quite well.
Rather than Fred Cats sneering at the back as Juve tried to lock down a win, Luciano Spalletti threw Gatti on to be the aerial threat that his team had been virtually lacking all game long on Sunday night. How did Gatti announce his presence on the field? By doing what Striker Gatti does — scoring a late header to snatch a result, this time giving Juventus a 1-1 draw against AC Milan when it looked like they were headed toward their for loss of the 2026-27 season.
Gatti celebrated with the curva as you would expect him to, with the steward right on the other side of the advertising board seemingly trying to not get absolutely tramped by what was happening right above and behind him.
You can be happy that Juventus still have a zero in the loss column. Or you can be frustrated that it took another instance of Striker Gatti to salvage a point in a game in which Juventus were the better side for large swaths of the 90-plus minutes. Both cases can be fair — especially when you look at how little their opponent did outside of the goal they actually scored.
Juve limited a Milan side that entered the Allianz Stadium on the back of their own two-game season-opening winning run feeling rather good about where things were under new manager Ruben Amorim. And yet, it was that same Milan side that finished with three shots all game, had an xG of 0.09 (!!) and all of seven touches in the opponents’ penalty area.
That is to say, in a shorter way, Juventus’ defense got the job done outside of one very well-placed shot that gave Milan the lead with just over 20 minutes to go.
So where does that leave us? Right back to a constant theme of these first three games of the new season: Juventus’ inability to score consistently.
This wasn’t like the first two games of the season where Juve were blowing chance after chance after chance. Their shot count wasn’t pushing 30 and you were left pounding your head on the table because of just how many goals they should have as compared to how many goals they actually have. But, Juventus hit the post (again), they forced some very good saves out of Mike Maignan in the Milan goal and certainly shouldn’t have been in position where they were chasing the game in the final 20 minutes.
Yet they were. Because in this second game without Kenan Yildiz to lead the push forward from the left wing, this team just ain’t clicking up front. And now that the schedule is very close to getting very busy, you just can’t help but wonder when their misfirings in attack is actually going to truly come back to bite them and they can’t overcome it with some randomness like we saw Sunday night.
Or maybe you wouldn’t consider Striker Gatti coming up big again.
At this point, I don’t think I’d blame you considering that this isn’t the first time he’s been the leading role in that aforementioned late-game randomness. At the very least, we know that he is going to be able to put his head on the ball — which is something that we couldn’t say for some of the other Juventus players on the field in the 92nd minute on Sunday night.
And that hair … my word, how luscious is that man’s hair looking these days? Striker Gatti forever.
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS
- Seven points in the first three games. Four of those are thanks to goals from central defenders. Just as we all thought would be the case before the season began.
- The last thing Randal Kolo Muani needed was to start the season like he has.
- For a man who is coming off a rough season in the Premier League — and, if you followed Spurs at all, you’d know not all of those struggles were exclusive to him — getting back to the place he truly wanted to be was looked as a much-needed (second) fresh start. Instead, he’s now gone the first three games without scoring and the natives are already getting restless. (And not just our comment section.) This man needs a goal in the worst possible way.
- Juventus were the better team on Sunday. That is what I know.
- Guessing the general message behind this chat was “GO SCORE A GOAL FOR US!” At least that is what I am going to pretend it was and you can’t tell me otherwise.
- Amorim this. Amorim that. Did you see how little Milan actually did in the final third? As much as the attack is still a total question mark, it does appear that Juventus’ two summer signings in defense — as well as Bremer being a few more months removed from his comeback — has tightened things up at the back in a big way.
- And yet, there’s Juventus allowing a goal on the first shot on goal again. Welcome to Juventus, Vic.
- That’s partly on Manuel Locatelli. It’s partly on Pierre Kalulu. Alphadjo Cissè had too much room to operate, he had too much room to shoot, and in turn Kalulu’s delay in getting back unintentionally created a problem for Guglielmo Vicario seeing the ball leave Cissè‘s right foot. It all resulted in a 1-0 deficit.
- This was a mixed first start in a Juventus shirt for Kerim Alajbegović. He started out strongly, was very involved, got a couple of pops on goal and looked pretty dang lively even if those shots were off target. But he definitely faded — especially in the second half — as the game went on. Was it conditioning? Probably. Still a decent first start, even if it was quiet last part before he was subbed off.
- Teun Koopmeiners with two goal involvements in his last two games. Just as we all predicted.
- I think it’s pretty safe to say that Nico González was absolutely spent by the time that he was part of the double sub that brought on Koopmeiners and Jérémie Boga in the 64th minute. That man ran his socks off and was an absolute menace for a lot of his time on the field.
- Man oh man, get me a front row seat on the Jhon Lucumí bandwagon. Let’s drive this thing through a wall.
- the Lucumí-Bremer partnership is looking pretty good two games into it being a thing. More, more, more!
- Locatelli completed a tacco in this game. It might have been one of the slowest-developing tacco that I’ve ever seen a player do. There are things Loca does well, but then there’s other things where it just looks like he’s going on half speed — and this was one of those instances.
- Juventus have now hit the post at least once in all three of their games this season. More shots on goal rather than actually on the goal, please.
- I’ve seen some folks getting grumpy about Luciano Spalletti’s subs in this game. Could he have maybe made some of them sooner? Yeah, but who else should he have brought on? His final unused outfield subs were two central defenders and two Next Gen players. With so many players out, Spalletti pretty much used every bullet that he had.
- So that wasn’t a foul on Kolo Muani that led to Milan’s goal? Do I have that right? Because it did look like a foul to me, but then again I am totally biased and don’t want to see Juventus allowing dumb goals.
- Zeki Celik being Juventus’ left back has brought just so much more calm defensively compared to the man who manned that position for much of the last few years. Juventus needed just a consistent, confident defender who won’t continuously shoot his team in the foot — and that feels exactly like what Celik has done so far since moving to Turin. And at a position we weren’t expecting him to play just a few weeks ago.
- We got to see the debut of Nick Woltemade and his mustache, too! That man is tall.
- Pure, genuine rima punta Woltemade is not. But he certainly showed to be a more technical player than this current version of Kolo Muani. (Which, I know, isn’t saying much with how rough Kolo Muani’s touches on the ball were in this game, but just trying to use a little comparison, folks.)
- Adrien Rabiot sending what proved to be one of Milan’s four shots into the second level (slight exaggeration) of the Allianz made me laugh. That won’t go on Veronique’s highlight reel the next time she goes into contract negotiations with somebody.
- Another solid if not spectacular game for Douglas Luiz. I’m good with it. He’s certainly not showing us that he shouldn’t be playing right now.
- You know who would have been nice to bring off the bench if he is in fact healthy? Arek Milik.
- And with that I say good evening to everybody. Have a nice weekend.
