Juventus have made a solid start to the new campaign, unbeaten through their first seven matches in Serie A, and just three points off league leaders Napoli.
While Juve haven’t lost, nor have they been a relentless winning machine – it’s three victories and four draws, with the big strength of the team so far being in a near-perfect defensive record: six clean sheets to start the season, then finally a first conceded last time out against Cagliari. Even that was a last-minute penalty, though, which begs the question: are Juve turning back the clock to build a title challenge on an impenetrable back line?
It is not all that long in historical terms since Juve were the dominant force in Italian football, though in terms of how quickly the sport tends to move on, it has gone on too long for the club’s liking: nine titles in a row from 2012 to 2020, but in the four years since, the best they have managed is a sole third-place finish – and even that, last year, saw them finish a whopping 23 points off the champions. They were not, it’s fair to say, in a title race.
And this season, the tests still largely lie ahead. Roma and Napoli are the only bigger clubs Juve have faced so far and both games ended goalless; while six clean sheets are of course an impressive statistic, failing to score in three of seven is somewhat less so. So is new boss Thiago Motta, who impressed last term with leading Bologna into the Champions League, really putting in place the foundations to challenge Napoli, Inter Milan and whichever other challengers emerge this term?
For starters, they are certainly overperforming relative to chances: just one conceded, but a combined xG against them so far of 3.4. But even if they regressed to the mean there, they’d still be far better than anyone else in the top flight: Napoli’s xG against of 6.3 has seen them concede five, while each of Lazio, Inter and Milan are between 7.6 and 8.1 total xG against, with between nine and 11 actually conceded. In other words, Juventus are being far meaner in giving up chances than everyone else, and doing a lot better at ultimately stopping those few chances going in, with most of the rest conceding more than they should.
With Gleison Bremer topping the blocks charts this season – 11 already, 1.8 per 90, top whichever way you look at it – and Federico Gatti finding consistent form as his regular partner, Juve built a fine base to start the season. Motta will now face a headache, though, with Bremer injured and possibly out for the remainder of the season.
But add in goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio establishing himself as the first choice and Juve still have every right to be optimistic. Early in the season though it of course is, Di Gregorio ranks higher than 93% of Serie A goalkeepers for high claims per 90, 90% of keepers for save percentage, 83% for his pass accuracy and, obviously, all of them for total clean sheets.
Yet as much as the old adage about attack wins games, defence wins titles might hold true for many, there’s also another side to that equation: too many draws and not enough wins will similarly damage your trophy aspirations. Consider: last term Inter won the league with 29 victories. Should they remain as good as last term, that means rivals can only allow themselves nine non-wins for the entire campaign – and as noted, Juve already have four draws with less than a quarter of the campaign done.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that 24/25 is a replica of 23/24, but the average points haul across the last four years since Juventus last won Serie A is 90.25 for the title-winners.
That means it’s likely to be at best 11 non-victories as the absolute maximum allowed, 27 wins and nine draws for example, with just two losses.
So they must attack – and must improve their attack, if the title is the aim. While Dušan Vlahović tops the Serie A charts for xG so far this term (5.6), three of his five goals have come from the penalty spot. For shots per 90 they have nobody inside the top 10 individually, and nobody in the squad who has netted more than once so far this term. Juve rank second for possession average, but a shocking 11th-highest in the table for xG: 9.2, with Atalanta the league’s highest on 15.1. Juve have actually scored ten, but that’s nowhere near enough outperformance to make up for a very low tally.
They are sixth for possession won in the final third, ninth for big chances created with barely half of Atalanta’s total, a woeful 12th for touches in the opposition box.
There’s much to like about the foundations already put in place by Motta, and certainly this team bears watching because of that, but so many improvements must yet come on the ball and in attack if they are truly a challenger this year.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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