Today we embark on another couple of controversial points of discussion. As we round the halfway mark of the season, and transition into what many dub “the business end” of the season, I wanted to take some time to offer some of my typically opposite perspectives for what is hopefully a heated round of debate.
Disclaimer: These are my opinions, and I am in no way telling anyone what to, or not to do, or, how to act. This is simply my perspective.
Let the games begin!
Item A: Results oriented management
We have all seen this movie before. Juve side’s peaking in the second half of the season. Being involved on all fronts at this point of the year. Max has many times professed his belief that you don’t need to play beautiful football. That his favorite results are 1-0 victories. That he is only concerned with winning games, and scoring goals. Juve is a wildly successful side, almost to the point of being spoiled as fans, almost. Six straight scudetti, two of three champions league finals appearances, multiple coppa italias and week in and week out many of us cry out for Max’s head, for more beautiful football to be played, for squad selection to be different, etc. etc. etc. Wild question for you to think on, but stay with me here. If I gave you the choice of picking your starting eleven, whomever you wanted within the squad, and that we played explicitly what you think is a more attractive brand of football, but didn’t take home a single piece of silverware at the end of the year, would you take that deal? What if it was at the expense of a champions league place? A top four finish even? In my personal opinion, I wouldn’t make that deal. Never. I’d rather win ugly and grab silverware year in and year out. Winning is what keeps us a viable option for many international stars to come to, and also pay reasonable wages. Winning is what makes us money and allows us to make certain transfers, build a new stadium, medical center, museum, and soon to be J Village. Winning expands our brand, especially with deep runs in the champions league. It certainly isn’t pretty or enjoyable at times, but it’s necessary. Also, we’re talking about a sport. When in the history of professional sports has the objective been anything other than winning? Do you think going into any game, in any sport in history that the manager, coach, or whomever gives a team talk to the effect of, “let’s go out there and play beautiful, if we lose, that’s alright, because at least we did it in style.” Hell no that doesn’t happen! People lose their jobs in sports if they don’t win.
Item B: Transfer speculation
No sooner than a window closes are many already onto the, “what if we had this player?” “What if we sold this player, and were able to get this player?” As my mother used to say to me when I was growing up, “What if your aunt had balls? Well, then she’d be your uncle.” Why are we so fascinated with the what if’s? With hypotheticals? Why don’t we more consistently talk about the squad we have? Obviously beyond the typical lashings handed down to our favorite punching bags. How is it over the last few years we have outlayed more cash on transfers than ever before, brought in tons of star names, and all we can talk about is who isn’t on the team? Certainly it’s fun to muse about from time to time, but maybe musing our current squad, formations, tactics, etc. are some more beneficial and insightful options too. Obviously with platforms like football manager and Fifa video games we can curate whatever squad we want, but let’s not forget, those are all augmentations of reality that relieve many of the restrictions of making a transfer happen in real life. Things like agents and our relationships with them, budgets, desire of the player, the negotiating club and our relationships with them, available spots for EU and non-EU players, rules and regulations of the FIGC for homegrown players, chemistry, language barriers, their families and relocation costs, salary, etc. etc. etc. It certainly would be great if we could have every single player we want without restriction, but that’s not exactly a realistic expectation, is it?
To come full circle, maybe, just maybe we can be happy with the results we do get as they are largely victories. Maybe we can be OK, more or less, with the makeup of the squad for the time being. It’s not perfect, sometimes it’s not even very easy to be a Juve fan, but the day we stop winning, the very day we stop pulling off amazing coup’s in the transfer market is the day I start buying into the rest of these things we do. Until then: let’s get real, or let’s not play.
A fast right back and one of Emre Can or Savic.
I love the disclaimer. The real question is: why should we either play good or win? That should go hand by hand , especially if you consider the silverware the team has. We do not talk about 2007s Juve. We are miles ahead the competition in Italy and you would expect to at least be able to win in style every now and thenl.
Look for Barca for example. They withstand a major blow in losing Neymar, they were thrashed from Real in the Sepercopa and the result was Valverde playing conservative for a couple of months until he saw what he expected from his players. After that the team plays amazingly good scoring beutifull goals and winning in style.
With Juve, it seems that this intermediate phase will last forever!
yeah what if we get back to juventus culture and stop become internazionale turin.
on the last match juve only played 1 italian player. the other 10 are foreigners.
and people talked about why italy failed to go to WC.
juventus fans nowadays only talking bout foreign players on every transfer windows.
it seems the juventus fans today never talking bout buying italian players or even look at the academy.
yeah i also choose result more then beautiful play like barca or city.
but more then trophies, i will choosing young italian players.
juventus means youth, but they only got 2 young italian players on the team.
fidanzata d’italia they called it but now italian girlfriend are cheating with Croatian & Argentinian boys. LoL
as an old school juventus tifosi i don’t enjoy this last decade of juventus transfers. marotta turns juventus almost like inter merda but with juventus organized & philosophy.
we buy & sell players almost at the level of antics merchant dealer not focusing on how to grew their own strength but by exploiting opportunities to catch a cheap deal, polished it then sold it for a ferrari.
no wonder there are many juventus arena seats empty.
no body feels emotions and attachments anymore with juve players. they are mostly playing like mercenaries, no grinta at all.
chiellini will battle until his head bleads when alex sandro busy to making excuses why he was flop so far this season because he failed to move to chelsea.
I wholeheartedly agree with the premise of the article. I agree that it’s fun to think about having everything we would want in a perfect world, but all in all we have it pretty good as Juventus fans compared to 99% of the clubs in the world. I can appreciate those that clamor for more Italians in the side like the old days (particularly Italians that regularly feature), but if you consider the fortunes of the national team recently would it really be more fun if we weren’t competing for titles? My assumption is that if more young Italians begin to reach world class levels or appear that they can Juventus will certainly look to them if feasible.
Coming to Netflix soon, a follow up series: Winning ugly – The Juventus Way! But why can’t we win pretty sometimes?
My biggest problem with playing ugly is the damage it does to the image of Serie A in general. I sometimes think about inviting non-SerieA fans to watch Juve play, but then decide against it because our play isn’t necessarily a good advertisement for Serie A. I know it is sometimes too much for us to expect the team to play beautiful football and also win, but that is a cross Juve should bear at some point. We certainly have the squad to play beautiful football and win games.
I agree with most of the articles content! But when it comes to transfer market and having few Italian players, I would ask if that’s not a symptom of illness in Italian football? That’s like that the Italian football caught a really bad cold in last decade(s) and doesn’t get well only because there’s no good medicaments in form of really good world class players. Only one star or two doesn’t make a beautiful night. You need many stars and more above and unfortunately it seems that Italian youngsters are not as much in playing football as they did few decades ago. Or at least they don’t put their hearts and souls into it. I guess something is missing there and that might be the real love for football. Instead football has become a way to get rich and famous fast while if you really don’t love it by all your body and soul you can’t become another Del Piero, Conte, Baggio, Maldini or Cannavaro and many more other former Italian stars. The realm is that in the Italian football sky many more stars die than creates. Lest hope the big lost in World Cup becomes an awakening bell and Italian football gets back to its past glory because the world of football needs good Italian football. I just fear that that’s only a wishful thinking. But hope is the last thing th……….
Thanks for the piece, comrade…
Max always sets the team up to hit full stride in February onwards. He is a pragmatist and its his job to provide winning football, the entertainment side is secondary. he is judged on results, and rightly so, with performances solely given the limelight when results are poor, which is not very often at al. Perhaps we will see more of the plans Max has made come to fruition over the coming weeks, perhaps we will not.
Sandro – who was one of the strongest players in the side – has been poor this term. Dybala has endured personal problems which have affected his form after such a superb start. The defence has had to deal with the loss of big Leo and mainly this has manifested as a lack of intelligent balls linking the back with the front. Less quality from Sandro, from Lichsteiner, from Bonucci in the middle. Three of the bread and butter routes of offensive foundation have been either lessened or removed. This is the most obvious issue the side faces. a lack of creativity from the backline linking with the forward players.
We have essentially dealt with these issues through becoming far more industrious than flowing. I suspect that a fair few fans do not fully grasp the value of a ball playing centre-back. Though they do sense an issue in the swiftness and flow of our football. We beat teams more on industry and a moment or three of individual quality than the collective working in unison. And it is here where Max needs to work harder to knit the side together, to work out perhaps a new formation or system or selection which brings us far closer to even the sum of our parts.
There is also the age old problem of mentality. Of leaders on the field. I had my own bothers with Big Leo but he had character, he made his presence felt…Other than him and Chiellini, what other characters are there in the side? Players whose zeal is always apparent? We are more functional than impressive, more rigid than flowing…not by intentional design. Perhaps by poor recruitment, yet it is not Allegri’s aim and I assume he is aware of our most glaring issues, as are others at the club…