The curtain has fallen on one of Juventus’ last remaining defences under Cristiano Giuntoli and Thiago Motta: their unbeaten streak in the league. The 2-1 defeat against Napoli marks Juventus’ first loss in Serie A for the 2024-25 season, and their third overall this season following defeats to Stuttgart in the Champions League and Milan in the Supercoppa.
Calciomercato report that while many in the Juventus camp might have been satisfied if told at the season’s start that their first league defeat would come in late January, the reality is far different. Juventus now finds themselves a staggering 16 points behind Napoli in the standings, a chasm that highlights the stark contrast with Allegri’s Juventus of 2023-24, which had amassed 53 points after 22 rounds. This first defeat exposes the most statistically relevant and disappointing aspect of Motta’s tenure: the enormous number of draws in the league (13) and, correspondingly, the low number of victories (just 8, merely 36% of games played).
The blame for this debacle is widespread, shared among players (Turin is still waiting for the real Koopmeiners to show up), the coach (Motta’s tactical rigidity and questionable lineup choices have been noted), and management. Today, we focus particularly on the management and, by extension, the ownership’s decisions.
Football Director Cristiano Giuntoli deserves credit for lowering the squad’s average age to 24.3 years, making it the second youngest in Serie A after Parma, and reducing the wage bill to €111.7 million from €125.9 million in 2023/24 and €166 million in 2022/23. However, he has also made a series of market errors, from the absence of a Vlahovic backup for the entire first half of the season to the slow response in finding a replacement for the injured Gleison Bremer in central defense.
Yet, there’s also an error attributable to the club itself, of which Giuntoli is somewhat a victim. The mistake, debatable like all assessments here, is placing a single man in command without a balance of power in the sporting area. Giuntoli works alongside executives who have no experience in the football world, namely President Gianluca Ferrero and CEO Maurizio Scanavino. This situation is reminiscent of when DS Alessio Secco worked with President Giovanni Cobolli Gigli and CEO Jean-Claude Blanc, men devoid of football experience.
This stands in stark contrast to when Juventus’ upper echelons were staffed by football men: Beppe Marotta, Fabio Paratici, and Pavel Nedved, alongside President Andrea Agnelli. After his growth experience at Carpi, Giuntoli worked in Naples with a meticulous, attentive, and ‘pressing’ president like Aurelio De Laurentiis, a strong figure who contributed to Giuntoli’s professional growth. In Turin, who can fulfill this role?
Observing the current Juventus, there’s a sense that other football men, or at least strong figures, are missing to make the entire mechanism more harmonious and solid. Their presence could provide crucial support in difficult moments to both Giuntoli and, ultimately, to Motta himself.
