Juve In Crisis?

The vic­tory against Inter was not backed by a vin­tage per­for­mance but served as a reprieve for Ciro Fer­rara who is under intense pres­sure from the tifosi to bring glory back to the Old Lady fol­low­ing a sum­mer spend­ing cam­paign which included the sign­ing of Brazil­ians Diego and Felipe Melo for con­sid­er­able sums.

Fer­rara was expected to help Juve com­plete the tran­si­tion from a side recov­er­ing after some cat­a­strophic sea­sons which included an enforced stay in Serie B, yet the Coach him­self seems to be wilt­ing under the demands of man­ag­ing a top side. The for­mer Azzurri defender has no coach­ing expe­ri­ence at the pro­fes­sional club level and despite his exper­tise on the field, he has yet to show the tac­ti­cal flex­i­bil­ity and knowl­edge off the pitch.

The vic­to­ries last sea­son fol­low­ing the sack­ing of Clau­dio Ranieri enabled the club to qual­ify to the group stages of the Cham­pi­ons League with­out hav­ing to go through a qual­i­fy­ing round. This was cru­cial as it gave the club’s play­ers addi­tional rest and more time to accom­mo­date some of the new sign­ings who were expected to make a major impact on the sea­son. Those ini­tial vic­to­ries achieved under Fer­rara last sea­son were cour­tesy of the shock caused by the sack­ing of the unpop­u­lar Ranieri as opposed to the man­age­r­ial skills of the young Ciro.

This sea­son he has shown time and again his inabil­ity to alter games whether through his sub­sti­tu­tions or even his choices for the start­ing lineup and the ini­tial for­ma­tion. The club play­ers have strug­gled to adapt to this tac­tics and the play­ers at his dis­posal do not seem to fit in well with the strat­egy employed by the Coach. The vic­tory against Inter came fol­low­ing a moment of magic from ris­ing mid­fielder Clau­dio Marchi­sio and not because of some move designed by Fer­rara or tried in prac­tice. Actu­ally Juve deserved to win because the play­ers gave their best and on the given night on-loan defender Mar­tin Cac­eres was play­ing his best game for Juve while the ever reli­able Gior­gio Chiellini was in the lineup.

Against Bay­ern Munich, the defen­sive rock Chiellini was absent and frankly the writ­ing was on the wall. For once there was not much Ciro could do as Fabio Can­navaro is clearly past his best while Nicola Legrot­taglie is best suited for a top 10 Serie A side and not a title con­tender. Per­haps the biggest con­cern for Juve is in the mid­field area where the absence of Momo Sis­soko often leaves the side’s defense unpro­tected and scram­bling to clear its line. The absence of both Chiellini and Sis­soko was vis­i­ble against Bay­ern. This does not pro­vide an excuse for the com­pre­hen­sive and humil­i­at­ing man­ner in which the Ger­man team’s play­ers man­han­dled the Bianconeri.

The Old Lady’s play­ers dis­played none of the fight­ing spirit and pride which used to be hall­marks under the lead­er­ship of Fabio Capello and Mar­cello Lippi before him. This implies Fer­rara is unable to prop­erly com­mu­ni­cate with the play­ers or per­haps there is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­down at some point as he does not appear to do well con­vey­ing his mes­sage to the play­ers. Start­ing Alessan­dro Del Piero and then sub­bing him with the unpop­u­lar Chris­t­ian Poulsen was another grave mis­take. Why did not Fer­rara give Giovinco the oppor­tu­nity to start and then use Del Piero in the second-half once the Bay­ern play­ers tired? Del Piero has just returned from a long lay­off dic­tated by injuries and cer­tainly is not 100% fit or even close.

The other prob­lem is once again the lack of alter­na­tives to Chiellini. The Juven­tus man­age­ment must make it a pri­or­ity to sign a cen­tral defender and a right-back as Jonathan Zebina, Zdenek Grygera and Mar­tin Cac­eres are all aver­age play­ers beset by injuries, lack of form and incon­sis­tency. The best of the three has been Cac­eres who after a solid per­for­mance against Inter turned in a pedes­trian dis­play high­lighted by the mean­ing­less penalty-kick given by him dur­ing the first-half.

The most alarm­ing fac­tors which are becom­ing more appar­ent as the sea­son pro­gresses are the decline of Diego and the dis­as­trous dis­plays of Felipe Melo. Diego started the sea­son off with some mag­nif­i­cent dis­plays, par­tic­u­larly against Roma and Lazio, which prob­a­bly placed higher expec­ta­tions on his shoul­ders yet he is now per­form­ing below any accept­able form. Is he not fully fit after suf­fer­ing from injuries? Only the Juven­tus coach staff can answer this quandary because the Diego who started the sea­son is vis­i­bly supe­rior to this one.

As for the other Brazil­ian, he has really strug­gled with the excep­tion of a cou­ple of games. Melo is both poorly used and not a man who will com­mand the mid­field with some eye pierc­ing passes. Basi­cally, Juven­tus signed another Sis­soko despite the play­ers hav­ing a dif­fer­ent approach to the game. Why play two mid­field­ers who are not the best at pass­ing the ball in the mid­dle of the park? This causes a high turnover ratio and a bunch of stray passes from both Melo and Sis­soko which often lead to dan­ger­ous and costly counter attacks against Juve. At this point of the sea­son, Melo’s sign­ing has proved to be both a costly and mean­ing­less one. He did cover for Sissoko’s absence but he did not offer any improve­ment on the Mali international’s per­for­mances. In fact, Sis­soko has played bet­ter despite his injuries this season.

All the blame can­not be placed on Ferrara’s shoul­ders because the man­age­ment once again invested in the wrong play­ers with the excep­tion of Diego who will bounce back based on his age and skill level. The cap­ture of Fabio Grosso and before it Can­navaro were hailed but at what expense? Both play­ers are not as good as they used to be and they are on the wrong side of 30. The club should have invested in a young left-back instead of bring­ing in a tem­po­rary fill-in. The right back posi­tion was also left uncov­ered and most sig­nif­i­cantly how can the lead­er­ship of the Bian­coneri leave the for­ward lineup lim­ited to the inef­fec­tive Amauri (he is strug­gling to score), or the declin­ing Del Piero and Trezeguet? Vin­cenzo Iaquinta was car­ry­ing the attack prior to his injury and since his absence the play­ers have strug­gled to find the net con­sis­tently despite Trezeguet’s goals.

The blame must be shared between Ciro Fer­rara, Alessio Secco, for­mer club pres­i­dent Gio­vanni Cobolli Gigli and cur­rent one Jean-Claude Blanc. The trans­fer cam­paign has been quite erratic. The play­ers must shoul­der part of the blame but injuries have again taken their toll which raises the ques­tion about Juve’s train­ing and fit­ness regiment.

On the brighter side, the Bian­coneri have beaten the Ner­az­zurri and can now focus on win­ning the league title. The squad is blessed to have Chiellini, Marchi­sio and Gian­luigi Buf­fon amongst its mem­bers as well as the promis­ing Diego. The irony here is the first three play­ers are Ital­ian and were all brought in or were part of the club prior to the cur­rent management’s unsuc­cess­ful buy­ing spree.

Look for the game against Bari to be another deci­sive clash for Fer­rara and his troops. A win will give him more time but the future of the Old Lady will even­tu­ally lie in other hands.