Juventus 1 - AC Milan 2: Initial reaction and random observations

01/03/2025 05:35 PM

Not exactly a great start to 2025, gents.

What was that about how Thiago Motta has been demanding his team put opposing teams away in a better fashion?

Ah, right.

Yeah, about all that ...

It was a five-minute spell as the latter stages of the second half arrived Friday night against AC Milan in the Italian Super Cup semifinals that Motta and his Juventus squad certainly want to forget as they make the trip back to Italy after a few days in Saudi Arabia. It was the result of Juventus not taking advantage of a couple of grand scoring chances to extend their lead following Samuel Mbangula and Kenan Yildiz combining for a brilliant opener in the 21st minute. The first blow came with a penalty kick that was converted by Christian Pulisic thanks to Manuel Locatelli's tackle just inside the box. The second, one that handed Milan their first lead under new manager Sergio Conceição, was thanks to a cross that deflected off Federico Gatti's leg and whizzed past Juve keeper Michele Di Gregorio who had clearly cheated off his line a bit in anticipation of catching that same cross.

Motta threw on just about everything he could to try and find an equalizer, but nothing came about.

So now, for just the second time this season, Juve have lost a game, although this one probably feels a little bit less of the stinging variety than the one against Stuttgart in the Champions League. (And let's not beat around the bush because some of Juve's 11 draws in Serie A have certainly felt like losses even though they technically got a point.)

No matter how you feel about Juventus falling in the new-look Supercoppa semifinals, it was another example of this team's inability to both put away their opposition and then have a self-inflicted mistake or two come back to seriously haunt them.

Let's just go ahead and list off a couple, shall we?

• Yildiz puts in a ball on a silver platter to Dusan Vlahovic, but Juve's No. 9 just completely shanks it.
• Because of Vlahovic being unable to put that big-time chance away, the score is still 1-0 when Locatelli's tackle results in a Milan PK that Pulisic scores past Di Gregorio.
• That Gatti own goal, which might not have been as wild as his own goal against Sassuolo last season but still very much providing a bit of comedy for the neutral.

Juventus are just their own worst enemy. It just continues to happen, and when you want it to stop it really doesn't show any signs of slowing.

That's why you have Motta saying what he has the last couple of weeks about his team needing to be better about putting teams away. The Vlahovic miss, which certainly would have put Milan on thin ice when they weren't playing all that well at all, is going to loom quite large because of how things out. As much as you can say that Milan got better as the second half went on, you had to feel like Vlahovic missing that big chance that would have put Juventus up 2-0 all of a couple of minutes out of the break would have given his team quite the stranglehold on the proceedings.

Instead, the ball went well, well wide. And, as a result, Milan still had some hope.

The result was Conceição very much instructing his team to be more direct — as proven with how things went before both second-half goals — and the script being flipped.

Is losing out in the Supercoppa semifinals the worst thing to happen to this Juventus squad this season? No, of course not. The potential €8 million prize money that comes with winning the mini-tournament would have been nice, but I'll go ahead and hedge all of this with the simple fact that this team now has a full week — albeit with a little travel thrown in this weekend — before a very important month of January domestically and in Europe gets underway on Jan. 11 with the second Derby della Mole.

That's not nothing when you consider just how shorthanded they have been for the last couple of months and are probably feeling all of those minutes.

Now let's just hope that Motta maybe hits his team over the head — figuratively, not literally, that would be bad — when it comes to putting teams away. Or taking advantage of the few scoring chances they may have when facing Milan or a team that plays this way.

It's a loss in a glorified friendly, but there's still a few lessons to be learned here. Unfortunately, it just feels like the same lessons we've been talking about for much of the 2024-25 campaign.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

• Thanks to Junior Conceição's injury in pre-game warmups, we didn't get the Conceição Derby in which many of us were looking forward to seeing. Oh well. Maybe it will actually happen in a couple of weeks when
• Juventus passes completed against Milan: 439.
• Milan passes completed against Juventus: 439.
• Yeah, I think it's safe to say that we can file that missed chance by Vlahovic early in the second as one of those in which he has to, at minimum, put on frame, if not score. That was an absolutely picture-perfect pass from Yildiz onto Vlahovic's left foot.
• But, right now, that's just the striker Vlahovic is. He will score some great goals, but he will also have some absolutely maddening misses that he should put away. You hope that somebody who is a couple of weeks away from turning 25 and with his experience would have out of his system by now, but he doesn't. And that's why, along with his massive salary and transfer fee, he continues to get the head that he does.
• It's not like Nico Gonzalez as the false-ish 9 worked all that well, either. Certainly a night to forget for at least some of Juventus' front four attackers.
• Not for a certain Kenan Yildiz, though. That boy's good.
• I mean, for Yildiz to go out and play like he did when he was thrust into the starting lineup on a night when he was preparing to be a second-half difference maker off the bench, it's quite the showing from somebody of his age.
• This was one of Yildiz's best games over the last couple of months. He could have scored a couple of goals, and even looked at home on the right wing despite rarely playing there much at all under Motta. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come once he's a little more rested because Juventus certainly need him with what's approaching on the schedule.
• We talk about Yildiz's pass to Vlahovic that couldn't be converted, but that pass from Mbangula on Yildiz's goal was a thing of absolute beauty. Just absolutely threaded through the Milan defense (most notably Theo Hernandez) and allowed Yildiz to do what he did. Maybe, just maybe, this is Mbangula getting things going again after a few quiet months that followed up his very impressive first couple of games with Juventus' senior team.
• It sucks that the Locatelli tackle attempt that led to the Milan PK happened literally seconds after a simply brilliant piece of defensive work from Nicolo Savona to not give away a penalty. Oh well. Them's the breaks with this team, I guess.
• The unfortunate thing — amongst the numerous — that came with Gatti's own goal is that he was having a pretty good game up until that point. Them's the breaks, too.
• Also, Gatti playing up front at the end as Juve tried to get a tying goal gave me flashbacks to college when our coach played the guy who was very much a defender but because he was 6-foot-5 he was played up top and basically just tried to be on the receiving end of every single cross possible.
• The last time Weston McKennie started a game as a midfielder was Dec. 14. He has started four games since then.
• This is not a shot at McKennie, so cool it on that front. It's more of an example pf just how limited the options are at the back even with Andrea Cambiaso now back from his sprained ankle. (Although a pretty clear sign that Cambiaso still doesn't have the capability of playing 90 minutes on said ankle just yet.)
• So this was either a Fikayo Tomori showcase game, or Senior Conceição really does see him being a big part of Milan's defense going forward. Which, in turn, could very well take away a logical option for Juventus during the January transfer window.
• Guessing if this same result happens in a couple of weeks when Juventus host Milan at the Allianz I'm not going to be as meh about it all. This just happens with the Supercoppa. It doesn't really pull you either way regardless of Motta having the chance to play for his first trophy as a manager.