As football fans around the world would tell you, reading too much into a pre-season friendly is always ill-advised. And yet, we can’t really help ourselves, especially on the heels of an embarrassing 3-0 defeat.
On Sunday night, Juventus were hosted by Barcelona at the Yohan Cruyff Stadium for the Gamper Trophy. The Bianconeri started the match with Cristiano Ronaldo, whilst the Catalans were still shaken by Leo Messi’s heartbreaking farewell earlier in the day.
Nonetheless, the Blaugrana were the better side from the get-go, wasting absolutely no time as they opened the scoring through Memphis Depay as early as the second minute.
Martin Braithwaite added the second after the break, and Riqui Puig completed the Old Lady’s routing with the last kick of the match, and it is worth mentioning that two Barcelona goals were disallowed for offside in the absence VAR, but they should have probably stood.
Whilst Juventus had their moments every now and then (and were repeatedly denied by the ex-goalkeeper Neto), they were mostly outplayed by the sharper Barca.
The fact that a host of Max Allegri’s players were playing their first match of the pre-season can’t be denied, with many of them having returned from their summer vacations earlier in the week.
However, the midfield was once again spotted as the main weakness point – reminiscently to the two previous campaigns.
Perhaps the fact that Allegri’s men are still far from their physical peak can explain why the team was outplayed and overran in midfield.
But let’s ask ourselves the following question:
How much can we expect from a side that relies on either Aaron Ramsey or Danilo to orchestrate the play from the Regista role?
That’s right, in the absence of a natural deep-lying playmaker, the returning manager resolved to a struggling attacking midfielder and a right-back for the all-important role.
Blaming either man for the outcome would be unfair. Not even Allegri is at fault for these uninspiring experiments in the lack of better solutions.
If anything, the management must finalize Manuel Locatelli’s transfer as soon as possible in order to fill the most obvious hole within squad.
And although some of the fans are against the return of Pjanic, the Bosnian (who spent his Sunday night as an unused substitute) would surely make an upgrade on what Juventus have at the moment.
Time is ticking before the official start of the campaign, and the hierarchy will only have themselves to blame if they fail to properly enhance Allegri’s squad by at least addressing the team’s one main weakness point.
