Juventus 0 - Club Brugge 0: Initial reaction and random observations

Yesterday at 06:30 PM

Well, that was ... yeah, rather forgettable.

It's the closing seconds of stoppage time Tuesday night and an unexpected name, Federico Gatti, jumps on a loose ball after Club Brugge wasn't able to clear the ball by the corner flag. Gatti, as we know, loves a random moment to attack, and very much approached this situation with the kind of gusto you'd expect from him.

He sent in a cross that needed just the slightest bit of touch on the ball to come close to one of his handful of teammates in the opposing penalty area. But instead of hitting the ball with that kind of finesse, it was hit with about as much steam as we saw from the shot that hit Gatti in the face earlier in the second half.

If you wanted a total summation of Juventus' ineffectiveness in the final third — as well as Gatti's overall steez on the field — against Club Brugge, I feel like that moment is an appropriate one.

The very impressive and extremely refreshing performance in all aspects that we saw from Juventus this past weekend against AC Milan was far from being there in Belgium. As much as Juve were still rather strong at the back outside of a couple of nervy moments, the same can't be said for what they did as you looked at the other end of the field. You could say that for both Juventus and Club Brugge, but the Bianconeri's ineffectiveness in the limited chances that they did have proved to be unrewarding, resulting in a scoreless draw and putting a serious dent in the chances of finishing in one of the automatic qualifying positions for the knockout rounds.

Here's the difference in how a win could have changed Juventus' position in the Champions League table entering the second half of Matchday 7:

• Atalanta, the team that was directly above Juve in the league phase table, jumped up 10 spots into fourth place with their win over Sturm Graz.
• With Juventus' third UCL league phase draw, they stayed ... basically right where they were at the start of the night.

Instead, what we got was an overall performance that provided just two two shots total and a combined xG of 0.14 from Juve and Club Brugge in the first half. We can boast about Juventus recording the first shot on target of the night, but the catch with it is that it came through Manuel Locatelli's long-range effort that was saved by Simon Mignolet in the 85th freaking minute.

The 85th minute! As in five minutes before stoppage time in the second half.

That is ... i don't even know how to describe other than the post directly below this sentence.

Juventus' defense getting back-to-back shutouts is a good development. Shoot, just some stability at the back considering how little rest the likes of Gatti and Pierre Kalulu have gotten is good to see as well. That part is a big thing and what allowed Juventus to at least somewhat offset their troubles up front during the first couple of months of the season.

But the inability to both create a lot and then actually take advantage of the little chances they did have certainly prevented Juventus from getting anything more than a draw Tuesday night. There were passes that were missed in the simplest kind of way. There were moments where a pass went one way and the run a Juve player was making went basically the other in a way that made you think about what the hell was going on.

Things were not smooth like against Milan. The pace of how Juventus played going forward was nowhere near what we saw at the Allianz Stadium on Saturday night, too. It was, at least going forward, a return to the struggles of months past rather than a continuation from the weekend.

In short, Juventus finished with five shots against Club Brugge. That's it.

Yet, amongst those chances, there were goals to be had. None of them were on target, but they should have been. Nico Gonzalez can tell you that. Teun Koopmeiners can tell you that.

But when you can count all of Juventus' shots on one hand, it's not a good thing. And it's a predictable outcome that they are not going to win outside of the rare occurrence.

So back to the draws we go, my friends. It was a nice reprieve over the weekend. It was nice to talk about a win for a change. But we're back to where we've been for much of the season. Back to the Land of Draws, where we now have seen Juventus record 16 of them in Thiago Motta's first 30 games as manager. That's a lot.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

• First thought as kickoff was about to happen: The Jan Breydel Stadium seats around 29,000 and damn it is LOUD in there. These Club Brugge supporters weren't messing around.
• Club Brugge had multiple teenagers in their starting lineup and Juventus still had the younger average age. That's funny!
• Club Brugge also didn't have a single player out injured Tuesday night. What's that like?
• Guessing a lot of us didn't think it would take until the third week of January for Douglas Luiz to make his first Champions League start with Juventus. But here we are.
• Juventus had 69% possession through the opening 20 minutes. Nice.
• Dusan Vlahovic entered Tuesday night's game in the 76th minute. He recorded more key passes (1) than just about everybody in the starting lineup not named Nico Gonzalez.
• Speaking of Nico Gonzalez, that was a baaaaaaaaaaaaad miss. Holy smokes.
• I was so hopeful that things might change for the better — you know, like an actual goal being scored — when I saw Kenan Yildiz's broad shoulders and Chico Conceição pop out of the dugout and step toward the fourth official. So hopeful! That didn't help much.
• Then again, it was nice to actually see Thiago Motta have a good amount of substitutes to choose from again. It's been a while, hasn't it? The players who did or didn't play were pretty much everybody you expected to fall into one of those two categories. No feelings of "well, look who he has on the bench what is there to do," or anything like that.
• I don't want to be a glutton for punishment, but the combined transfer fee of the three players that Motta took off in his triple change with 15 minutes to go sure was a lot of money!
• One more sub note: Did Motta take off Samuel Mbangula too soon? Something to ponder, my friends.
• It was good to see Mbangula play well against the first club he played for in the youth ranks. He didn't look overwhelmed by a moment that surely brought back memories where things literally began for him, and doing well on home soil in Belgium was nice to see. Hopefully this resurgent Mbangula form only continues because it's nice to see him playing well again.
• Michele Di Gregorio certainly had a couple of nervy moments with his feet, but at the same time he didn't actually have to make a save against Club Brugge. So there's that.
• Gatti was the one who was awarded the UEFA Man of the Match award. The picture of him holding said award did not look like a guy who was all that happy to be posing for it.
• Related note: Pierre Kalulu good. It just continues to be that way. Good, good, good.
• Tackles made by Kalulu: 5.
• Talkes made by the rest of Juventus: 3.
• I would like Koopmeiners to have another chance to put that header on target. It would be nice. Is that possible?
• That's all I got. From this kind of attacking performance, I don't know what else there is to say about it. Just another one of those days.
• So now let's see what version of Juventus shows when they head to Naples this weekend. Surely a Antonio Conte-led Napoli side that has had a week in between games will see this tepid Juve performance in attack and be licking their chops.