Juventus lose their heads and the Supercoppa semifinal against AC Milan

01/04/2025 05:00 AM

Juve again failed to put their opponents away and collapsed quickly to drop their first game in the new-look Supercoppa.

I'm about to say something very un-Juventus-like: It's been a long time since I was less bothered by a loss.

Probably the last time was in 2015 when Juve played the scrubs against a bankruptcy-bound Parma team while leading the league by double digits and a Champions League semifinal was looming.

Yes, Juve's 2-1 loss to AC Milan on Friday night in the semifinal of Serie A and FIGC's bloated money-grab of a Supercoppa Italiana looked pretty damn bad. Once again, they failed to put an opponent away. Once Milan finally managed to land a punch, they couldn't get out of the haze and pull themselves back up off the mat. One ridiculously unlucky bounce later off Federico Gatti later, and Juve were on the wrong end of a result that was setting off alarm bells for a lot of people, in both fan circles and punditry.

While the root causes of the loss do bear examination, at the end of the day, it was the Supercoppa. A Supercoppa that was putting a major strain on a squad that was already stretched thin. Losing this game, rough as it was, does remove some of that strain and allow for more time for rest and preparation for a critical stretch that starts next week with the return leg of the Derby della Mole. If the team can use the lessons from this loss to start that, so much the better.

Thiago Motta's injury list was whittling down, although the decision to leave Danilo home ahead of a potential January departure sapped the depth chart. Arkadiusz Milik was still injured, while Andrea Cambiaso and Tim Weah were only fit for the bench. Another hitch was encountered when Francisco Conceição was injured during pregame warmups. Motta's 4-2-3-1 was anchored by Michele Di Gregorio. Nicolò Savona, Pierre Kalulu, Gatti, and Weston McKennie made up the back four. Khephren Thuram and Manuel Locatelli made up the midfield. Kenan Yildiz replaced Conceição in the lineup, joining Teun Koopmeiners and Samuel Mbangula to support Dusan Vlahovic.

Conceição's injury deprived the game of one of its more amusing narratives, as his father Sergio was on his first game day as Milan's new boss, taking over for the sacked Paulo Fonseca. He came into the game missing a few high-level players, including Rafael Leao and Samuel Chukuweze, as well as Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Alessandro Florenzi. Fonseca adjusted the team into a 4-3-3. Mike Maignan started in goal, screened by Emerson Royal, Fikayo Tomori, Malik Thiaw, and Theo Hernandez. Ismael Bennacer, Youssouf Fofana, and Tijjani Reijnders played in midfield, and Christian Pulisic, Alvaro Morata, and Alex Jimenez made up the attacking trident.

Milan came out of the gates pressing like their hair was on fire. Juve managed it well enough and started breaking out and counter-pressing enough to create Milan some serious problems. They couldn't string more than a few passes together, occasionally giving the ball away deep in their own territory, with Bennacer, showing clear rust having just come back from injury, being a repeat offender.

Unfortunately, Juve's attack had a case of the Almosts — they would almost get their attacks right, pushing right up to edge of the danger zone before either bogging down through bad decisions, poor execution, or, once or twice, good Milan defending on otherwise excellent passes. They only allowed Milan one shot — a harmless blocked effort by Fofana in the fifth minute — but didn't manage one of their own for the first 20 minutes.

Their first one, though, was a beauty.

Just like the two goals against Fiorentina last week, Juve's opener came via a through pass that split the defense in two. This time the supplier was Mbangula, who retreated to the center line to pick up a pass from McKennie and spotted Yildiz, who had a good 10 yards of lateral separation from Hernandez, ahead to his right. There was open field between Yildiz and the goal, and Mbangula found him with a perfectly weighted ball into the channel to his teenage teammate. Yildiz met it with a perfect first touch that teed himself up in the channel to smash the ball into the top corner, giving Maignan no chance.

Juve continued to dominate proceedings as the first half wore on. Koopmeiners headed a good cross from Mbangula over the bar, and Emerson Royal managed to get a foot to an excellent cross by Yildiz that kept Vlahovic from a tap-in. Maignan kept the score at 1-0 in stoppage time after Yildiz took down a goal kick from Di Gregorio and held off the attentions of Thiaw as he carried the ball through a seam and put the ball on frame from 22 yards out.

Milan had looked completely disjointed in the first half, and early in the second things didn't look like the were changing much. Within 40 seconds of the restart Juve had broken the Rossoneri's renewed press and gave the ball again to Yildiz, whose 19-yard daisy cutter across goal missed the far post by the width of the ball. Sixty-six seconds later a Savona interception set up Yildiz to cause more threat, this time sending a perfect ball behind the defense for Vlahovic, only to see the big striker open up too much and push the ball wide with Maignan at his mercy. It was a sitter — and it would turn out to be very costly.

Conceição Sr made a change early in the half, bringing off a completely ineffective Bennacer for US international Yunus Musah. The switch immediately made Juve uncomfortable, and just a minute after he came on Milan's first true threat of Di Gregorio's goal came when Morata and Tomori set Hernandez up perfectly off a corner, but the Frenchman's nightmare season continued when he contrived to miss worse than Vlahovic did, lifting the ball over the bar from eight yards out.

But Musah's introduction brought renewed energy to Milan's midfield, and they started to get home with their pressing a bit more. Di Gregorio made his first save with just under 25 minutes to go in the match when Pulisic set up Reijnders for a first-time shot that the keeper stopped dead on the dive. But a few minutes later the game turned irrevocably.

With 20 minutes left, Hernandez finally managed to get himself running at the Juventus defense. He beat Savona initially, but the youngster recovered and made a fantastic challenge in the box to stop his run. Unfortunately, that was followed by a decidedly less fantastic challenge by Locatelli, who wiped out Pulisic at the top corner of the box as they went for the loose ball. The USMNT's captain stepped up to take the penalty himself. Di Gregorio actually guessed correctly that he would go down the middle, but wasn't able to get a strong enough hand to get the shot over the bar.

The Bianconeri looked shell-shocked as play resumed, and started making basic mistakes that they hadn't been making early in the match. Proving that when it rains it pours, when Musah galloped downfield the attacking right in the 75th minute, Juve got hit by the bad luck stick. Di Gregorio, who had anticipated an early cross from Musah and had already committed himself to getting up the box to claim it, ended up completely out of position when a deflection off Gatti took a crazy bounce into the goal via the spot he had vacated.

It was Juve's turn to chase the game, and Yildiz very nearly found the response in only three minutes when he hit a goal-bound shot off a pull-back by Cambiaso, only to see it blocked. Koopmeiners was presented with a dangerous free kick opportunity in the 83rd minute, but his attempt to beat Maignan by going past the wall to the far post failed to produce the necessary surprise. A few minutes later McKennie was played into a huge open space on the left and was perhaps too unselfish, putting the ball into a crowd of Milan defenders when he had ample opportunity to shoot himself.

Juve seemed rushed and panicky as the final minutes of the game ticked away, and things weren't helped by the fact that Vlahovic had been taken off before everything had gone to hell, putting Nico González into the striker position and forcing Juve to make do without a reference point. But they had one final chance to send the game to penalties when Douglas Luiz headed a cross from Yildiz into the air and Gatti, forward as an extra target, met it with a roundhouse volley that would almost certainly have tied the score had substitute defender Matteo Gabbia not somehow managed to get his hip in the way and deflect it behind. It turned out to be the final kick of the match, and the referee ended the game immediately before a corner could be taken, knocking Juve out of the mini-tournament and sending them home to Italy with some things to think about.

LE PAGELLE

MICHELE DI GREGORIO - 5. Getting a hand to Pulisic's penalty without keeping it out was rough, but ultimately you can't blame a keeper for not stopping that sort of spot-kick. But his positioning on the winner can be questioned, and it was symptomatic of an uncharacteristic struggle to control his box. It might not be a surprise if Motta gives him a mental health day against Torino.

NICOLÒ SAVONA - 5.5. Pretty good day defensively for the youngster. He made a pair of tackles, including that excellent one on Hernandez (we'll try to forget what happened right after that) but was much shakier in possession, losing the ball 19 times and only completing 81 percent of his passes.

FEDERICO GATTI - 6. He's got a collection now for weird own goals, although unlike last year's head-scratcher at Sassuolo he can't be faulted for this one. He did everything he could have done, the bounce just went to the worst possible place. He was also desperately unlucky at the end when Gabbia deflected his shot. Sharp otherwise, making a couple of important interventions and completing 95 percent of his passes.

PIERRE KALULU - 6.5. Had four clearances, two blocked shots, and won all of his duels, and completed 96 percent of his passes. Can't be faulted for anything that went wrong.

WESTON McKENNIE - 5.5. Had four clearances but was bettered by his man more than a few times on the flank, winning only four of 11 ground duels and losing possession 12 times.

MANUEL LOCATELLI - 5.5. A pretty good performance until that moment of madness on the tackle that gave away the penalty, which was completely unnecessary. It put a huge damper on a day that saw him register another five tackles and keep the team moving for much of the first half.

KHEPHREN THURAM - 6. Didn't quite reach the heights of his Fiorentina performances but still held his position in midfield and made life hell for Bennacer until he was finally hauled off.

KENAN YILDIZ - 8. Far and away the best player on the field. His goal was perfectly taken, and he could easily have had another goal or two if things bounced the right way. He also thoroughly deserved an assist for that ball to Vlahovic early in the second half. And did I mention he had three tackles? All-around dude.

TEUN KOOPMEINERS - 5.5. Had a pair of key passes but he wasn't exactly keeping the ball flowing in the attack. He can still do more, and dropping back to the pivot is still going to be best for him.

SAMUEL MBANGULA - 7. Followed up a rough performance against Fiorentina with an excellent one here. His assist for Yildiz was inch-perfect, and he added on another key pass while being a real problem for Emerson all night. Probably removed a little too soon.

DUSAN VLAHOVIC - 4. That play in the second minute of the second half has to be put on target. If it is, the chances of it being a goal are high. His touch was iffy all night long, and he wasn't making the right runs to make things easier for his teammates.

SUBS

ANDREA CAMBIASO - 5. Musah simply ran past him in the lead-up to the winner, and he wasn't able to contribute much at all to the attack.

NICO GONZÁLEZ - 5. Only touched the ball nine times and didn't record a single shot, and really wasn't there in terms of being a provider out of the false nine position.

DOUGLAS LUIZ - NR. Should maybe have been on a little earlier when Juve had to change the game. He wasn't the biggest of threats, but it was his header back across that provided that final chance to Gatti.

TIM WEAH - NR. Only touched the ball four times in limited minutes.

NICOLÒ FAGIOLI - NR. Completed 16 of 17 passes, but none of them created any direct danger.

MANAGER ANALYSIS

There's a lot of blame flying around for Motta about this game, and I don't think a lot of it is deserved.

It's fair to question a few decisions. The removal of Vlahovic and Mbangula so early seemed to sap the team of some of its offensive inventiveness, especially since false nines have been so hard for the team to pull off this year. Similarly, guys like Weah, Luiz, and Fagioli could and should have come in a little earlier than they did when it was clear the game needed chasing.

But you once again saw some serious progress when the team was attacking well in the first half. Yildiz's goal was the third in a row the team has scored that was created by a raking through ball that broke the defensive line and sent an attacker through. It's the kind of move we've been waiting to see all year, and it's there, growing with every passing match. If the team can keep developing those passages of play, stay healthy and pull the defense into form over the winter window, we could finally start to see the Motta-ball that we wanted to see from the moment he was hired.

LOOKING AHEAD

Juve get the week to rest before a trip across town for the second game of the Derby della Mole. That's followed by a huge midweek match against leaders Atalanta, and then another tilt with Milan, this time at home in the league.