just catching up with some stuff i wanted to read. this is from the athletic:
Let the architect work. Now is not the time to judge Pirlo
By James Horncastle Oct 29, 2020
It’s six weeks since Andrea Pirlo was in the classroom presenting his dissertation to the instructors at Coverciano. The 41-year-old completed his UEFA Pro Licence but is still learning. Wednesday’s
2-0 defeat to Barcelona was the biggest test he has faced since then and it did not go as well as Pirlo would have hoped.
Juventus don’t lose often at the Allianz Stadium, particularly in the Champions League. This was only their fourth home defeat in Europe since their new stadium opened nearly a decade ago and while some fans cursed the Old Lady’s rotten luck as Alvaro Morata had a hat-trick of goals chalked off for offside — a feat even Pippo Inzaghi failed to achieve — Pirlo was reluctant to dwell on his side’s continued recent misfortune. “I wouldn’t say (we were unlucky),” he reflected afterwards. “We can’t go clinging onto that.”
Statsbomb’s xG metric mirrored the result almost exactly, with Barcelona producing 2.02 to Juventus’ meagre 0.35. Wojciech Szczesny, the width of the post and the hit-and-miss decision-making of Ousmane Dembele kept the scoreline respectable without discouraging the inevitable extremism of reactions on social media, where Pirlo has predictably already been declared out of his depth. The season is only six games old and, while it’s true Juventus haven’t won a Serie A match since that scintillating opening night against Sampdoria, nothing is compromised.
The defeat was disappointing, come as it did a week on from a routine and businesslike 2-0 win in Ukraine, but last night’s draw in Budapest between Ferencvaros and Dynamo Kyiv makes it even harder to imagine Juventus not qualifying from this group with something to spare as they approach back-to-back games against the Hungarians. It buys Pirlo time to ingrain his ideas and realise the vision he has for the team.
The job he inherited is not as easy as it looks. Juventus retained the title by a single point last season. They lost more league games than both runners-up Inter Milan and third placed Atalanta and, for the first time in nine years, Italy’s best defence did not wear black and white. Even with Cristiano Ronaldo up front, four teams managed to outscore them in Serie A. In Europe, the Bianconeri are going backwards, exiting the competition in the quarter-finals and then the round of 16 in the last two seasons.
An old team needed freshening up and it wasn’t entirely surprising to hear Pirlo point out last night that recent youthful acquisitions Dejan Kulusevski and Federico Chiesa are new to the Champions League and will need time to adjust. As for Arthur, Rodrigo Bentancur, Weston McKennie and Merih Demiral, they may have had a taste of it already but are still in their early 20s and lack experience.
The rejuvenation of the Old Lady goes much deeper than them, too.
One of the positives of Pirlo’s short tenure in Turin has been his willingness to promote from within and give game time to kids like Gianluca Frabotta, Giacomo Vrioni and Manolo Portanova. Usually, players from the club’s under-23 side only make an appearance in the first team at the end of the season, when the championship has already been won. But Pirlo clearly did his homework in anticipation of taking charge of them in Serie C —
that is, until the first-team job became vacant upon Maurizio Sarri’s dismissal — and, as the under-23 project enters its third year, there’s a lot to like about his courage in using the youth sector as a resource.
While on the one hand leaning on the under-23s showcases his confidence in the readiness of these players for the elite level, it would also indicate, on the other, the incomplete status of the first team at the moment. A combination of injuries, COVID-19 and the revolving door of the transfer window has denied Pirlo the chance to work with everyone at the same time and field a full-strength, almighty Juventus side. Ronaldo has now missed five games after a positive PCR test while on international duty with Portugal and, while no team should be dependent on one player, the absence of Lionel Messi would be keenly felt at Barcelona, as would that of Robert Lewandowski at Bayern Munich. The five-time Ballon d’Or winner was responsible for more points than any other player in Serie A last season (24) and accounted for 41 per cent of their goals.
His strike partner and last year’s MVP in Serie A, Paulo Dybala, missed the first month of the campaign with the injury he sustained against Sampdoria in July and then picked up a stomach bug while away with Argentina at the start of this month.
Replacements for Gonzalo Higuain and Mario Mandzukic didn’t arrive until late in the window, with Morata not joining until after the season had started and the deal for Chiesa going through on deadline day just over three weeks ago, which was also the start of the international break. At the back, Matthijs de Ligt is only now reaching the end of his rehabilitation from shoulder surgery in August, captain Giorgio Chiellini has played 90 minutes in Serie A only twice since the start of last season and Alex Sandro’s injury on the eve of the campaign raised one or two questions about the decisions to move Luca Pellegrini and Mattia De Sciglio out on loan when Frabotta is the only natural left-sided defender on the squad.
Once everyone is fit and ready to go, it’ll be interesting to see if Juventus have lift-off under Pirlo.
For what it’s worth, his ideas have put smiles back on the players’ faces and captured their imagination. A couple of last year’s signings, Danilo and Aaron Ramsey, are coming good in the hybrid roles he has allocated them. Serie A’s reigning Young Player of the Year, Kulusevski, a disappointment last night, has taken quickly to playing for the champions, finding the net on his debut against Sampdoria and scoring an equaliser in Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Verona. Morata has hit the ground running in his second spell at the club with three goals in his last four appearances. One of the reasons cited for his immediate impact was the fact he stuck around at Continassa during the recent international break. Overlooked for the last Spain squad, Morata was one of the few Juventus players who got to work uninterrupted with Pirlo and his coaching staff. Practically everyone else was away.
Kulusevski (Photo: Daniele Badolato – Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images)
The lack of time on the training ground and disruption to Juventus’ preparation has slowed progress. The short turnaround from one season to the next, almost no pre-season to instill bold new concepts, just the one warm-up match to test out ideas in and national teams now calling up bigger squads for blocks of three games compressed into two breaks consisting of qualifiers and unnecessary friendlies have forced Pirlo to experiment in real time. “Shall we say the difficulties were easy to predict,” Juventus’ vice-president Pavel Nedved said before the Barcelona game. “We’ve made a lot of changes. We’ve changed the squad. There’s a new coach. We’re missing some big names. I’m not looking for excuses.”
Football comes down to the finest margins and Juventus are living proof of that this season — not that they will elicit much sympathy. Morata has had five goals disallowed already and hit the post in Crotone; the young Portanova snatched at a chance the former Real Madrid and Chelsea striker created for him in that game; Dybala crashed a shot against the bar at home to Verona, as did Juan Cuadrado. Outside those opportunities, the attack has actually been quite shy. Juventus didn’t have a single shot on target against Barcelona, mustered just the two against Verona and, according to Statsbomb, rank 17th for clear shots in Serie A. The return of Ronaldo will boost those numbers but, even with him, they were fortunate to leave the capital with a point against Roma and keep making life difficult for themselves.
They have finished three of six games down to 10 men and while Chiesa’s red card in Crotone was certainly harsh, the others doled out to Adrien Rabiot at the Olimpico and Demiral last night were justified and serve as another explanation for the team’s timid shot volume because, all told, Juventus have had to play a man down for 80 minutes.
Still, they have conceded just 0.96 xG per 90 minutes, a defensive stat only Napoli and Udinese can better in Serie A. Unfortunately mistakes keep creeping in though, be it the casual misplaced pass Federico Bernardeschi made in the build-up to Verona’s opener last weekend or the avoidable penalties they’ve given away against Roma, Crotone and Barcelona (where poor Bernardeschi was caught out again). In all, Juventus have faced nine spot kicks this calendar year. Bonucci, incidentally, has been responsible for four of them.
“It’s time to grit our teeth, come together, play like a team and bring the best out of each other,” he observed on Wednesday night. “The results are not up to our standards. The thing I’m hopeful about though is we want to play the ball. If we believe in this path and keep improving, we can have a great season.”
The scepticism currently enveloping Pirlo, and Juventus’ choice to hire him, does not come as a surprise to the club’s hierarchy. President Andrea Agnelli is aware eyebrows were raised and the club’s judgment doubted when Pirlo was announced as Sarri’s successor. At Juventus’ AGM earlier this month, he said: “Over Pirlo’s first few weeks, I have the feeling that the world around us can’t wait to judge a couple of defeats. What Pirlo lacked is a pre-season. Me, Pavel, Fabio Paratici and Federico Cherubini are going to be there for him on this journey.”
That journey has only just begun.
As a player, one of the nicknames Pirlo went by was The Architect and, one thing’s for sure, his blueprint for Juventus is clear.
Right now, the foundations are currently being laid. Not all the best materials are available.
When they are, we can judge him.
For now, let him work.
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