Firstly, congratulations to Juventus CEO Maurizio Arrivabene for significantly reducing salary bills since taking over just over a year ago.
However, there seems to be a clause in some secret collective agreement between the club and the squad that states that the players only have to perform for 20 minutes or so (at their choice) of the 90 total.
For what feels like the umpteenth time this season, Juventus took the lead while looking inspired during the opening stages of the match, only to fade as the minutes ticked on while looking unmotivated, lost and without a shred of character.
At this point, is it worth celebrating a Juventus goal? Now it has surely become a bit of a rarity these days, but what’s the point, really? Either VAR steals our joy or our players hit the self-destruct button. Regardless of the cause, doom feels inevitable.
At the end of the day, we still haven’t recorded a single point from two Champions League games, and our chances of reaching the round of 16 hang in the balance.
And to be fair, we have nothing to do in the later stages of the tournament. Benfica are by no means a perfect team, but despite their weaknesses, the Iberians are better equipped and much more deserving of a place in the Round of 16.
While the resilient Eagles gritted their teeth and maintained their composure after falling, our players simply don’t have the right mindset to don the historic black and white jersey or the determination to give it their all for the cause. Unfortunately.
Here are some other random takeaways from our miserable European night:
You’ve probably noticed that we haven’t mentioned public enemy number one yet, Max Allegri, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a role to play in the collapse. While his starting build was arguably the best he could field at the moment, taking out Arek Milik was simply inexplicable considering the latter was our only source of hope up front. A few years ago we used to wonder how the team would manage without the inspiring leadership of Gianluigi Buffon, Giorgio Chiellini, Claudio Marchisio and Andrea Barzagli. Well here is the answer. During the final minutes of the match, a friend of mine sent me a text message saying that he was done with Juventus until a new coach arrived. Apparently, many share the same sentiment, as evidenced by the number of empty seats at the Allianz Stadium during the “big European night”. Therefore, the team’s performances are not only hard on the eyes and terrible for the standings, they are simply bad for business in every sense of the word. Luckily, Juan Cuadrado is suspended for Monza, because the poor guy needs to rest as soon as possible. With such a huge engine, Weston McKennie can be an absolute beast in the middle of the park. Too bad he doesn’t have the technical skills to complement it. Fabio Miretti deserves some support. It’s not his fault that he’s making his breakthrough at a club that’s in shambles. Yes, he gave away a penalty, but at least he put up a fight to keep the ball.
