Sometimes, you deserve to win and you don’t. Sometimes you don’t deserve to win and you do. There’s a whole spectrum of “Team X absolutely deserved/did not deserve to win this game but for Twist of Fate Y” that can happen in this sport.
But it’s not often that Team X really doesn’t deserve to have won, but absolutely should have anyway. When that rare scenario does pop up, it’s more often than not that Twist of Fate Y is an a refereeing decision of a questionable nature.
So it was in the 88th minute
of Juventus’ Europa League match with Stade Rennais when Danish referee Morten Krogh somehow decided that a clear attempt at a clearance by a Eliezer Mayenda wasn’t enough overt enough to reset the offside position of Jhon Lucumí, who had chased the wayward ball down and fired it past Brice Samba with the aid of a deflection. Shade should also be thrown at German VAR Benjamin Brand for even thinking that the play was worthy of going to a review to begin with. The rule had tightened the rule this year to give defenders the benefit of the doubt on an inadvertent touch — which in and of itself seems kind of stupid, does IFAB not know that fans enjoy watching goals get scored? — but the play clearly didn’t meet the standard for disallowing the goal.
The incident meant that instead of a 3-2 win thanks to some more late-game magic, Juventus had to settle for a 2-2 draw that dropped them from first in the league phase table to seventh. Did Juve deserve that 3-2 win? Probably not. The offense was once again stagnant, even with Randal Kolo Muani and Nick Woltemade playing together from the start for the first time. The defense was out of place at times. Nothing about the team currently seems complete.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact that, frankly, Juve were screwed out of two points by an inept display from Krogh — who also bears the responsibility for calling a silly penalty on Douglas Luiz when he was trying to protect himself. I try not to get too deep into “it’s the ref’s fault” discourse, but in this case Krogh really did screw this game up, and as meh as Juve played, he bears the ultimate responsibility for the result due to the direct result of his incorrect call.
But enough about how much the ref sucked. How did Juve’s players do? Let’s take a closer look.
GUGLIELMO VICARIO – 6. Made a couple of really good saves that kept Stade Rennais from widening the lead, but also made a few really head-scratching decisions about whether to abandon his line and got lucky they didn’t make him pay.
FEDERICO GATTI – 5. A mostly down day for Freddy Cats. He was weak defending Mousa Al Tamari on Stade Rennais’ first goal, but thought he had made up for it a few minutes later when a fantastic header was poked away by Samba, who somehow threw up a hand to deflect it wide.
BREMER – 5.5. Made seven clearances but also wasn’t as assured as we’re used to seeing him. After his outburst over the weekend following the loss to Lazio, it would’ve been nice to see him step up and play better.
LLOYD KELLY – 5.5. Made a team-high four tackles but his passing was quite poor, which drags him down.
ZEKI ÇELIK – 6. Great finish for the opening goal but faded a bit as the first half went on, which is likely why he came off at halftime. Hopefully he’s not an addition to the injury list on Friday.
DOUGLAS LUIZ – 5.5. Had some good numbers, picking up three interceptions and completing 92.2 percent of his passes, but felt like he wasn’t as creative as you’d hoped. I won’t ding him for the penalty, it was a bad call.
TEUN KOOPMEINERS – 6. A much better performance as opposed to his last few outings. Had three key passes and was second on the team in tackles (also three).
ANDREA CAMBIASO – 4. Looked really horrific on defense on multiple occasions. His marking on Stade Rennais’ first goal was awful, and he made a mistake that very nearly gifted them a 3-1 lead midway through the first half. Nothing he did with the ball came close to making up for it.
WESTON McKENNIE – 6. Denied point-blank by a fantastic save from Samba which pushed his effort off the post. Led the team with four key passes and seemed to enjoy himself playing in the hole behind the strike pair.
RANDAL KOLO MUANI – 4.5. Nowhere close to the more confident RKM we’ve seen through a lot of October. His touch simply wasn’t there and he was never a danger factor up front.
NICK WOLTEMADE – 6.5. Solid on the penalty, although those slow run-ups always give me agita. Assisted Çelik’s goal with a fabulous pass as well. This would’ve been higher if he’d managed to get any of the six shots he took from open play on target — although a few of them were good ones that were blocked.
SUBS
PIERRE KALULU – 5.5. Still wasn’t as solid as we’ve seen over the last few weeks, but he pulled off the Chiellini special bandage pretty well.
NICO GONZÁLEZ – 5.5. Worked hard but didn’t create much up front. Had more interceptions (2) than key passes (1).
JHON LUCUMÍ – NR. Screwed out of a winner by a horrible refereeing call.
JÉRÉMIE BOGA – NR. One of only three players on the team to record a dribble, but didn’t create anything off it.
KERIM ALAJBEGOVIC – NR. Not given any time to make an impact.
MANAGER ANALYSIS
Luciano Spalletti’s team was able to avoid full-blown crisis by getting the draw in this game, and as I’ve repeated a few times already, they were jobbed out of this game by the referee. That said, it still wasn’t as if a revelation was made, and that was with a couple of changes made, starting with the Woltemade/Kolo Muani partnership being established from the start.
Of the changes Spalletti did make, using McKennie in the hole behind those two seemed to be the most effective — the U.S. international had a good first half and clearly was enjoying himself up there. But Cambiaso certainly didn’t justify his inclusion, and the defensive rotation caused some more problems, much like they did against Celta Vigo a week ago.
Spalletti still doesn’t have this team creating quality chances regularly, which remains the biggest issue on this team. The odd bit is that the guys who tend to make the best passes right now are the ones that we think of as the guys who should be finishing — particularly Woltemade, who played well with his feet today while dropping a little deeper than most football fans are used to seeing a guy that tall go. But Juve still look timid when they get to the final third. There’s something holding them back from trying to make a killer pass, and sometimes to even take on their man, as evidenced by the fact that they only registered three dribbles total on Thursday. Even when it comes to shooting, players (looking specifically at Kolo Muani here) tend to look for the extra pass more than using a good position to put the ball on goal.
More than anything else, this looks like a team in their own head. It’s hard to tell exactly why, but Spalletti has to put his finger on it and get this team unstuck, because they have the talent to do much more than they’re doing. The question is whether their coach can get them there.
LOOKING AHEAD
Juve have three league games in the next 10 days, taking trips to Lecce (Sunday) and Genoa (Wednesday) before welcoming an equally struggling Napoli side to the Allianz the following Sunday. Then a trip to Pot 1 opponent AZ Alkmaar continues the Europa League campaign on Thursday, Nov. 5.
