Sergio's Grab Bag: Daunted

Today at 07:10 PM

Happy New Year! Let's all get mad at our football club in 2025.

Happy new year, everyone! May this be the year all of our collective resolutions finally come true. Why not us, right?

As the calendar flips to 2025 and we all contend with the fact that people born in the year 2007 are now legal adults — it shook me for a moment when I heard it for the first time! — there's one thing that has remained consistent from one year to the other and that is Juventus being a bummer.

The Bianconeri closed out the 2024 calendar year with a closer-than-it should-have-been victory over the literal worst team in the league Monza and a — shocker — draw against Fiorentina. If you thought the vibes would change with a new year, a different competition and an entirely different continent, fear not. Many of us were optimistic like that as well.

After all, what's more "New Year, New Me" than taking off to a foreign, exotic country and playing a team that had just fired their coach literally days before the match? Do you think Sergio Conceicao knew the names of all his players by the time kickoff started? Like 75% at least?

Didn't matter, Juventus dropped the match against AC Milan 2-1 in the semifinals of the new-look Supercoppa thanks to their continued habit of giving away matches in more creative ways than you thought possible, as the Thiago Motta-led team has officially surrendered their first trophy opportunity of the year.

(Sure, the Supercoppa is a glorified friendly that is now even more meaningless than before with the dumb four-team tournament format and the fact they play it in a half-empty stadium in Saudi Arabia, but if you are a "big team" you should still aim to win every official competition you are in.)

In what could have been a nice boost to a shaky first semester in the 2024-25 season, Juventus spent roughly the same amount of time flying back and forth from the Middle East than they actually spent in Saudi Arabia and are now back in Italy to resume Serie A competition this weekend against Torino.

New year, but some things remain the same.

Missing: Flagship Striker

I'm tired of Dusan Vlahovic.

Every striker is going to miss chances — it happens, it's unavoidable. Nobody goes 100% from the field. But the amount of scoring opportunities Vlahovic continues to miss for Juventus is absolutely maddening and far beyond something that you could construe as "growing pains" at this point.

This January is the three-year anniversary of Vlahovic's shock move to Juventus for a whopping €83 million and while there have certainly been highs in his Turin tenure, the inconsistency, the missed chances and the disappearing act in many clutch moments are the only thing that have been a constant during his stint.

Do we want to make the case that during Max Allegri's tenure he wasn't really used well? Fine, I kinda disagree, but sure. What's the excuse now? He's playing with an extremely offensively-oriented coach, with the most talented supporting cast that he has ever played with. We are in January and Dusan Vlahovic has seven goals to his tally in Serie A.

I guess €83 million doesn't buy what it used to, huh?

At this point, Vlahovic is who he is — a brilliantly talented player with all the physical attributes in the toolkit that is also inconsistent, lacks a killer instinct and hasn't shown clear signs of vast improvement in three years. The same issues he had when he was a new signee under Allegri he still displays now under Motta.

Does that mean that Vlahovic is a bad player? Of course not. But he is not an elite striker.

He belongs in the realm of very good, nice to have player. Not in the realm of guys that you build rosters around or bank on taking your team to the next level. Not a player that was worth that €83 million price tag the team paid three years ago and certainly not a guy that is currently the highest paid player on the team and in the league.

But, hey, next time he wakes up, puts up a monster game, maybe scores a curler into the net from a free kick we can all talk ourselves back into Vlahovic. Maybe he finally strings together more games like that? Sure, 57th time is the charm.

Serie Gone

It is Jan. 9 as of this writing and Juventus are currently 12 points off the lead in Serie A.

(They do have one game in hand, to be fair.)

Unless something remarkable happens, both in terms of the Bianconeri turning their form around and the teams above them bottling their current advantage, it looks like a certainty that Juventus will not challenge for the Serie A title for the fifth year in a row.

That's half a decade in which the winningest club in the country hasn't come close to adding to their number of scudetti and especially for this year that's a damn disappointment.

Juventus spent just shy of €200 million during the summer transfer window to completely retool this roster to the exact specifications and needs of Motta. They brought in the most talented midfielder in the league from one of their direct rivals in a massively expensive deal. They sold young, promising guys to bring in more talented, established talents and made tons of moves to secure players for this season with the expectation to pay for them next year.

Those are all moves you make if you have the expectation to compete right away — which is good! You are Juventus, you should always be competing for important hardware. I said back then that Cristiano Giuntoli's reconstruction of Juve's roster in one summer was impressive and it was.

Nobody can foresee injuries, nobody can predict players not playing up to their talent or committing mistakes that cost you points. You should judge the process not the result. But the reality is that Juventus already being in "Well, Top 4 was the goal all along" is a nice spin from Giuntoli and co. but a failure in the real world.

Parting Shot of the Week

Hey! This has been a happy, go-lucky edition of the grab bag to begin the new year, huh?

You will forgive my rather pessimistic take on things, but there are only so many times that one can write similar things without asking yourself if this will change in the short term.

This current season reminds me a lot of Andrea Pirlo's first year. When it works it looks great and when it doesn't? Yikes, I just had another flashback of Dejan Kulusevski getting dispossessed as the last man in the midfield for whatever reason.

(Remember the first game of the Andrea Pirlo era in which Aaron Ramsey of all people looked like the second coming of Michel Platini? Good times, great times.)

(On that note, do you think anyone not Welsh and/or a member of Ramsey's immediate family still owns a Ramsey Juve kit? It'd be hilarious. I will trade one (1) rotisserie chicken with two (2) sides to anyone with said kit. The deal is on the table.)

Motta and co. still have one semester to turn things around. Am I super hopeful they will? No, but I still hope they do. What's the point of watching this if you don't believe at least? Isn't that the whole point?

See you next time.