You could say that Juventus were unlucky on Wednesday night. Genoa only took two shots on target, and both of them were helped into the goal via a deflection, and they saw a last-gasp attempt to get a consolation crash off the underside of the crossbar and leave about a quarter of the ball on top of the goal line.
You could throw up your hands and say it was the Marassi again, that place that even at the height of the Streak always seemed to see something go drastically wrong once or twice a season.
But all of that would be making excuses for the fact that Juventus simply didn’t show up. The simplest and most all-encompassing reason why Juventus were run out of the Stadio Luigi Ferraris with a 2-0 defeat was that they were awful. If there was a duel, they lost it. If there was pressure from the defense, they folded to it. If there was a pass to be made, they fluffed it. They completely ceded the first half to their hosts, and their effort in the second was only a marginal improvement. At no point did it look like they’d be able to pull themselves back into the match. There simply weren’t any answers forthcoming, and everyone watching knew it — and it was all the more galling knowing that they were turning up their noses at some advantageous results from elsewhere around the league.
It was the kind of game where you just waited for the end so you could be put out of your misery. Or wallow in it. Or something.
Luciano Spalletti was still dealing with an injured list that contained some of his most important players. Kenan Yildiz, Manuel Locatelli, Khéphren Thuram, Nico González, Zeki Çelik, Francisco Conceição, and former Genoa striker Jeff Ekhator were all still sidelined. Spalletti had gotten a little bit more out of the attack with two strikers in the last week, but he moved back to a 3-4-2-1 formation for this one, presumably to give Nick Woltemade some rest. Guglielmo Vicario started behind the back three of Federico Gatti, Bremer, and Jhon Lucumí. Pierre Kalulu and Andrea Cambiaso started as the wing-backs, flanking the double pivot of Douglas Luiz and Pape Matar Sarr. Weston McKennie and Kerim Alajbegovic supported Randal Kolo Muani in attack.
Daniele De Rossi’s Genoa had started to deliver some better results in recent weeks, and were coming in healthy as well. Only Lorenzo Venturino, Cody Drameh, and Elias Havel missed out on the match. De Rossi mirrored his old Roma manager’s formation, anchored by Justin Bijlow in goal. Alessandro Marcandalli, Johan Vázquez, and Leo Østigård formed the back three, while Kingsley Ehizibue and Mikael Ellertsson took up station at the wing-back spots. Morten Frendrup and Alex Amorim made up the midfield, and Tommaso Baldanzi and Vitinha served in the hole behind Milutin Osmajic.
Things went bad early. Genoa immediately pinned Juve back in their own half and did not let go. Juve’s defenders blocked four shots in the first 10 minutes and conceded a pair of corners. The opening goal came at the tail end of a long run of passing play from Genoa that met precisely zero pressure for Juve for the better part of a minute. In the end Baldanzi was sent toward the byline, and his cross went through the 6-yard box and found Ehizibue, who hit the ball low toward the near post. Vicario looked like he was going to meet it there — but Cambiaso inserted himself into things. His attempt to block or clear the shot went about as wrong as it possibly could have — he deflected it over his keeper and into the roof of the net. Ehizibue’s shot was on target so he was credited with a goal, but I think for the first time I can say I’ve seen an own goal in spirit.
Any hope that Juve would take that blow and find an even keel was quickly extinguished. They carved out a little more possession, but their attacking product was just shy of diddly squat. Alajbegovic fired a shot right into Bijlow’s gut in the 23rd minute, but beyond that nothing was asked of the Genoa goalkeeper.
In the 28th minute, Juve dug themselves a deeper hole after a sequence that bordered on comical. They tried to get a training-ground corner to Alajbegovic, but he barely got contact on it and it bounded around the box for a moment before Frendrup launched the ball up the field. Kalulu was the only Juventus defender back, and he tried to chest the ball down to himself but completely missed the fact that Vitinha was behind him. The Portuguese jumped the Frenchman and charged toward the box. He lost the ball as he charged down the channel, but Baldanzi was right behind him to latch onto it and fire on goal. The ball took another deflection off Bremer, taking it in the opposite direction Vicario’s dive, leaving the disbelieving keeper wondering what the hell was going on.
Even that didn’t fully snap Juve out of whatever trance they were playing in. Luiz was completely unaware of his surroundings when he let a loose ball sit there, expecting a teammate to get to it before realizing no one was within 10 yards of Frendrup, who charged downfield with it only to fire wide. Miscommunications between the Brazilian and his keeper led to an awkward clearance out for a corner.
It was midway through the two minutes of stoppage time in the first half that Juve almost had a lifeline thrown their way. Their best passage of play on the night by far saw Alajbegovic pull the ball back for a wide open Kalulu, but his attempt to shape a shot toward the corner was inexplicably mishit, and he sent the ball wide.r
Woltemade and Edon Zhegrova were immediately sent on to start the second half, but the latter did little to justify the calls for him to see some starting time after his productive start to the season, constantly giving the ball away either off the dribble or the pass. Østigård and Vitinha both had chances to put the game beyond all doubt but fired their shots just over the bar, while Bremer did the same off the corner with 25 minutes left that could’ve put the game back on.
Bijlow finally had to get his heart rate up in the 70th minute when he was screened from seeing Zhegrova’s shot and had to lunge to bundlle it around the post. But that was the last real threat Juve presented until stoppage time, when Teun Koopmeiners stood over an indirect free kick and unleashed a powerful shot that took a slight deflection before cannoning off the bottom of the crossbar and back out into play, while Jérémie Boga and Lucumí had followups blocked and saved, respectively. Bijlow pulled a last-second header from Woltemade out of the top corner for one last save as the final whistle sounded, giving Genoa their first win against Juve since 2022 and leaving the Bianconeri with so, so many questions to answer.
