Does Juventus have a chance to get back into the Scudetto race?

Yesterday at 02:00 PM

Mathematically speaking, of course ...

I hope all you wonderful Juventustifosi had a good holiday season. Being on my winter break and having some free time, I wanted to take look at the numbers and see where Juventus' men's and women's teams stood at this point in the 2024-25 season and if they mathematically could win their respective Serie A titles.

Both teams have not lost a game in Serie A yet this season, although the similarities stop there. For the women's team, it is pretty simple — with some basic addition and algebra skills, one can clearly see the chances of ending Roma's run of back-to-back scudetti is very probable. For the men's team, perhaps one would need to use some Bayesian statistics, or maybe skip the math all together and just say winning the scudetto is not possible.

Juventus Men

Scudetto win?

For the men to win the scudetto this season, a lot of improbable things will need to occur over the second half of the campaign. If we take a look at the last 10 years of Serie A title winners and the number of points they earned over the season to be in first place, it averages out to 89.8 points (with a 3.6 standard deviation).

Juve currently have all of 32 points after 18 games, with a seven wins, 11 draws, and zero loses, averaging 1.777 points per game. They are 12 points behind first-place Napoli — followed by Atalanta, Inter, Lazio — and are tied for fifth place with Fiorentina. There are 20 more games remaining this season and Juventus would have to win 19 and draw the other to get to the average ~90 points a Serie A team usually needs to win the league (or win approximately 17 and draw three to get to within a standard deviation of the average). I don't think it is unfair to say that it is highly unlikely that Juve will go from their current 1.77 average points per game to a 2.9 points per game to get to 90 points. Paired with this improbable occurrence, is that Atalanta, Napoli, Inter and/or Lazio would all need to start floundering and dropping points.

If Juventus keep at their current record, they will only have 67 or 68 points at the end of the season — a total that would mean they're unlikely to even be in the top four.

Sadly, it doesn't exactly surprise me Juve are in this position. Although hopes were higher at the start of the season, the moment Gleison Bremer went down in that Champions League game against RB Leipzig in October and tore his ACL, I knew it was going to be a rough season. Hopefully Juventus can pick up some new players in the January window to bolster the defense as well as the injury-prone bench.

I think there's still a chance points-wise for Juventus to be the top four, but things must improve.

Thiago Motta's performance

It is hard to judge Motta's performance in Serie A during his first season coaching Juventus. The aforementioned loss of Bremer to an ACL tear and other copious injures that have plagued the team and can only leave us with hypotheticals of what things could have been with a full and healthy team. I graphed out Motta's record in the first 18 games of the season to compare to other first seasons of Juventus coaches in the last 10 years (see figure below; note I put Max Allegri in there both in his first first season as well as the first season of his second stint). Points-wise, Motta is a bit below Andrea Pirlo's first season, and well below Maurizio Sarri's and Allegri's 1.0 seasons; he is ever so slightly above Allegri 2.0, but just by one point. Juventus went on to win Serie A in the 2014-15 and 2019-20 seasons, and finished fourth in 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons.

In the Champions League, Motta is doing a bit better, but it is pretty difficult to compare to past seasons given the format change. Juventus are currently in 14th place with a three wins, two draws and a loss and 11 points in the "league" phase, and have two more games (against Clube Brugge and Benefica). They will likely make it through to the playoff round, but could even, mathematically speaking, bump themselves up into the automatic qualifying group if they 1) win both their games, 2) score goals, 3) do not concede any goals, and 4) the 34 other games mostly work out in their favor (!).

Juventus Women

The Juventus women have done well in Serie A this season. They sit top of the table and have 11 wins, two draws and no losses in their first 13 matches, and are right points above second-place Inter and third-place Roma, the two-time defending champions. I must say that I was a little reticent and disappointed in Juventus' decision to hire Max Canzi back in May, and also worried about all the good players that left the team this summer. But Canzi has proved me wrong and is clearly doing a good job domestically. The team seems to be really unified and have pretty decent depth even with the new and younger players. In particular, Sofia Cantore is having herself a season, with seven goals already in Serie A and each of them quite spectacular. But it is also the veterans that are stepping up — for example, Cristiana Girelli is leading Serie A with eight goals.

There are five more matches in the Serie A Femminile first round, and I predict Juventus will most likely win four of those (maybe tying Inter again or dropping points to Roma). This would keep them top of the table, as the women then move into the second phase of the season, the Poulle Scudetto.

The Poulle Scudetto puts the top five teams into one group and the bottom five in another, and teams play each team in their division twice to determine the Scudetto winner and the teams that will get relegated, respectively. Granted, this second round will be more difficult, but if Juventus are able to win most of the eight games and only tie/lose of couple matches, they should end up winners. If they do, Canzi will be the third coach of Juventus Women to do so in their first season, which so far all first-time coaches of the team have done (including Rita Guarino in 2017-18 and Joe Montemurro in 2021-22).

Juventus Women are still in the running for one other trophy this season: they play Lazio away and home Jan. 15 and 30 in the Coppa Italia quarterfinals. As for Champions League, Juve did not make it out of the group stage, losing in both legs against Bayern Munich and Arsenal. We were very unlikely to win the Champions League, but a bummer not to make it further. Perhaps it is here at the women's European level that we can see Canzi's inexperience. Losing both home games against Bayern and Arsenal in the group stage was particularly disappointing, especially after Juve's stunning 5-2 aggregate win over PSG in the previous round.

Anno Nuovo

As we enter the new year, perhaps you are thinking of resolutions to set for yourself. For the Juventus men's team, the obvious ones are: 1) Score more goals, 2) Win, not draw, games, 3) Get into the top four of Serie A by the end of the season. An additional ambitious resolution would be to win some trophies. Winning the Serie A trophy is all but improbable. Although they will likely make it into the next rounds of Champions League, it is unlikely Juventus will win that trophy. Maybe the Coppa Italia?