Juventus is playing a dangerous game again this year

If there is anything Juventus should have learned last season, it’s that sometimes just winning isn’t enough.

Yes, Juventus should absolutely be happy about the fact that they are the only team in Europe’s top 5 leagues who has yet to lose. However, the way that they’ve gotten there shouldn’t make them nearly as happy.

We saw this last year. Juve won their first 10 matches between Serie A and the Champions League and it took them until the middle of march to lose a match in Serie A (both of those runs were ended by Genoa). There was just one problem with all of their success. It wasn’t a result of particularly impressive play. The attack looked disjointed and Juve struggled to regularly create the quality chances you would expect from a squad with their level of talent. This was due in part to the fact that Paulo Dybala was regularly played in the wrong roles, either on the right wing or as a lone striker in the center of a 4-3-3 formation. He never got comfortable in either role regardless of how many chances Juve gave him.The defense also had one big issue. Leonardo Bonucci was not very good last season and really just represented a major liability for Juve.

Unfortunately, Juve’s qualification for the knockout stages of the Champions League and massive lead at the top of Serie A stopped them from every really needing to make any adjustments. Juve’s best option to replace Bonucci in the starting lineup, Medhi Benatia was rarely given the chance to start and eventually left Juve. Dybala ended up making 30 starts and 39 total appearances in spite of his struggles and the fact that Juventus had Douglas Costa, Federico Bernardeschi, and Juan Cuadrado were all available to replace him and were much better suited to the role.

While these decisions didn’t end up hurting Juve early in the year, they proved costly in the Champions League knockout stages. The lineup they started in the first leg against Atletico Madrid

put forth an abysmal effort, sending the home for the second leg with a 2-0 deficit to overcome. Then they finally used Bernardeschi on the right wing instead of Dybala. That change, along with a few other tactical shifts and an unbelievable performance from Ronaldo, helped Juve get the 3-0 win they needed to advance. Then they drew Ajax in the quarterfinals and managed to earn a draw in the Netherlands in spite of Giorgio Chiellini’s absence, but then went back to the squad that lost to Atletico (minus Chiellini who was still injured) and were eliminated at home by a young Ajax squad.

That elimination was a major disappointment for Juventus and their fans after nearly taking out eventual champion Real Madrid the year before and then adding Cristiano Ronaldo, Joao Cancelo, and Leonardo Bonucci to their squad. The Scudetto seemed like a consolation prize after Juve’s early exit. This disappointment was due mostly to the fact that Massimiliano Allegri refused to make changes to improve his team’s play because the results they were getting were good enough. Now we are seeing them make the same mistakes this year.

This year it isn’t Bonucci or Dybala who are the problem for Juventus. In fact, those two are two of the main reasons why Juventus is still leading both Serie A and their Champions League group this year. A formation change has gotten Dybala back into his best role and he has thrived this year. Bonucci has been resurgent on the defensive end and has helped lessen the blow Juve suffered when Chiellini tore his ACL.

Now their problems stem from the midfield and the misuse of their full backs. It seems that Sarri’s plan is to have the team attack through the middle of the field and try to break down opposing defenses with quick passes from the midfield. Unfortunately, that midfield features Sami Khedira and Blaise Matuidi. Khedira has been terrible for Juventus this year. He is old and slow and isn’t the quality of player that you need to compete with the top clubs in Europe. Matuidi’s issue is simple. He is a defensive midfielder who isn’t a particularly adept passer and doesn’t provide much to advance Juve’s attack. Starting Matuidi would be absolutely fine, but only if Juve had a stronger attacking player as the other player alongside Morale Pjanic. Starting both Matuidi and Khedira just serves to stop any momentum built in the attack and stagnate everything Juve tries to create.

There is also another option. Juventus could create more of their offense from the wide areas of the field. That would require them to effectively use their full backs in every match. Unfortunately, that has been rare this year. Juve’s full backs are creating way less opportunities than they did last season and Alex Sandro has barely been involved in the attack all. This problem just gets worse when Danilo or Mattia De Sciglio start on the right side, as they don’t possess Cuadrado’s attacking abilities.

If Juventus is going to start Sami Khedira and Blaise Mautidi then they’ll need to use their full backs to stretch the opposing defense and create openings for the attack. If Cuadrado and Sandro can get more involved in the attack then they can counteract the deficiencies of Matuidi and Khedria. If that isn’t the way that Sarri wants to approach his squad’s attack then he needs to make changes in the midfield. Luckily, Sarri has some options to choose from if that is the path he chooses.

He could start Aaron Ramsey instead of Sami Khedira and keep Blaise Mautidi in the starting lineup. That would require him to start Douglas Costa in Juve’s trequartista role, which is something we saw work very successfully against Lokomotiv Moscow. He could also start any of

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Rodrigo Bentancur, Emre Can, or Adrien Rabiot instead of Matuidi to join Pjanic and Ramsey in the midfield. If he wants to keep Ramsey as the trequartista, then he would likely need to replace both Khedira and Matuidi with two of Bentancur, Can, and Rabiot to bolster the attack from the midfield.

Unfortunately, the fact that Juve has yet to lose and sits atop both Serie A and Group D has made it so that Sarri isn’t required to change anything. Many of the fans also support this idea that we don’t need to worry yet because Juve continues to get results in spite of their poor play. Instead, I would like to point out that this is exactly why Allegri “stepped down” at the end of last season. This is how Juventus was playing early in the year last year. Fans called for Allegri’s job and nothing change. When the team finally fell short in their most important competition (and embarrassingly in the Coppa Italia), Allegri ended up being replaced. Now, Juventus finds themselves in the same situation and because Sarri is in his first year, we aren’t hearing the same opinions from fans.

There is absolutely no denying that Juventus has played horribly lately. I’d even argue that the last match Juve truly deserved to win was nearly a month ago when they beat Bologna. In their latest match against Lokomotiv, they really deserved to outright lose that match as Lokomotiv was the better side for the majority of the match. Since Juve’s win over Inter Milan, the revamped attack Maurizio Sarri was supposed to bring with him has been nowhere to be found.

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This might not seem like an issue right now, but as we saw last season, if left unchecked it can entirely derail the season. Wednesday’s match again Lokomotiv needs to serve as a wake-up call for Maurizio Sarri and galvanize him to start making changes to his approach. If not, this could be another year where Juventus falls short of their Champions League aspirations in spite of massive expenditures.

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