Juventus player ratings vs Napoli: Costa, Higuain, and Koulibaly save Juve

LB: Alex Sandro 7/10

Alex Sandro didn’t get himself on the highlight real like the other Juve fullback who finished the match, but he did play well for Juve. He was surprisingly uninvolved in all of Juve’s attacking success, but he put in a solid performance defensively. It wasn’t anything special, but with how much of a mess the defense was in the last 30 minutes, the fact that Sandro didn’t make mistakes made him very valuable for the defense. It won’t be a performance that gets talked about this week, but he at least brought a bit of stability to an extremely unstable defense.

CB: Matthijs de Ligt 4/10

What a disastrous debut for Matthijs de Ligt. He completely lost Hirving Lozano, leading to Napoli’s second goal of the match, and couldn’t get to the ball ahead of Giovanni Di Lorenzo to prevent Napoli’s equalizer. It was also his slip that forced Alex Sandro into the challenge that gave Napoli the free kick that led to the equalizer. It was an awful second half for de Ligt that he will hope to quickly put behind him when Juve comes back from the international break.

That being said, there is plenty of reason to believe that this was far from what we’ll see from him the rest of the year. Being thrown into a match against the league’s second best team with teammates you haven’t gotten the chance to build chemistry with and possibly can’t communicate with is an absolutely brutal situation to be in when making your debut with a new team. He played fine and looked comfortable in the first half, but that second half will be the lasting memory through the international break.

CB: Leonardo Bonucci 6/10

It seems like any time Leonardo Bonucci is trusted with the captain’s armband, Juventus has suffered major letdowns in the second half. Last year, it was the debacle against Genoa last year where the team stopped playing because they thought the ball had gone out of bounds and Genoa equalized for Juve to drop their first 2 points of the year. Now, it’s blowing a 3 goal lead against Napoli before being rescued by a Koulibaly own goal. Bonucci himself wasn’t awful. In fact, he had a good first half and wasn’t directly responsible for the Napoli goals. The issue is that when you get that armband you are the one who needs to pull the team out of a tailspin and he couldn’t do that in the second half.

RB: Mattia de Sciglio: Inc.

Mattia de Sciglio was unfortunately only able to play 15 minutes before being subbed off due to injury. Given his injury issues throughout his career, it is always worrisome when something new pops up for him. He was combining well with Douglas Costa during his short time on the field, but unfortunately didn’t have enough time to really make an impact. Hopefully his injury is minor and he’ll be back soon for Juventus because they really can’t afford another injury to their defense right now.