Why Juventus have bigger problems than Thiago Motta

Serie A giants Juventus sacked Thiago Motta yesterday and Igor Tudor was brought in as an interim replacement, with the Croatian having an option to extend his stay if the club quality for the Champions League.

To many, it feels like the removal of a dark cloud from Juventus, especially considering the heavy losses to Atalanta and Fiorentina. But the reality could be far from how it seems and Juve are simply floating around in circles, trying to find an identity that has escaped them.

Juve’s goal with hiring Motta was modernising. That was the idea sold during his appointment as they wanted to play a new brand of football and move away from a pragmatic and rudimentary style. There was the promise of more goals and usage of younger players, as the likes of Nico Gonzalez, Teun Koopmeiners, Douglas Luiz arrived as shiny signings.

But the club – as they have in the past, failed to realise that moving away from a rudimentary style to a more expansive style of football will always take time, unless a club signs an entirely new squad on the basis of the technical needs of the manager. Juve drew multiple games in a row and struggled to score goals. The latter improved slightly after the arrival of Randal Kolo-Muani but it regressed to mean.

Motta’s fixation with his approach and inability to communicate his ideas effectively left him alone at the club, as he couldn’t bring the most out of players. But does that always justify a sacking?

The line from Juve is that the axing came as a result of a failure to finish inside the top four. When the truth is that the Bianconeri are only a point off top four and have Parma, Monza, Lecce and Genoa as four of their next five games. Three weeks ago, they were in a title race – according to sections of the media.

That section of the media has fed off briefs against Motta, who was villanised left, right and centre by Juve and their players. The briefing game against the manager saw his authority get undermined and even if a club as big as Juve had the power to stop it, they stood off and it was clear that they were also briefing against Motta and putting out names of replacements in public.

It is similar to what Milan did with Paulo Fonseca as they also wanted to modernise away from Stefano Pioli but due to the Portuguese’s inability to get inside the top four, he was sacked in a rather rude manner.

Juve also probably had a similar concern with Motta and that is fair, considering how finances in Serie A operate. But the entire point of modernising and looking at a new identity is to build that for the longer term, while knowing that it could take sacrifices in the short term. ‘Project managers’ like Motta do not necessarily hand the assurance of the short term because their ideas are more complex than those of Max Allegri or Pioli.

A club that hires Motta – or even Maurizio Sarri and Andrea Pirlo, needs to have patience and fully buy into the path they’re taking. But they’ve failed to realise that once again, even if Motta’s Juve were only a point behind top four, which could have guaranteed the club from a financial sense.

A manager like Allegri sacrifices the long-term to make sure that the short-term and medium term needs are met, while not focusing much on player development. That approach suits a club like Juve, largely because they want Champions League football for financial reasons and also have a thirst for silverware.

That is a pattern followed by not just Juve, but also Milan and Roma, who fail to realise where they stand in their vision to build clubs. They have the seen Jose Mourinho, Pioli and Allegri win silverware but just as they have tried to modernise, things haven’t worked out and managers have been sacked in a short space of time even if they were raising the technical flooring of the team. Patience runs very low and a lot of that is financial.

At the same time, Juve will shell out around 20m in the Motta sacking and that is saying something for a club that has been under the microscope of the authorities in the last few years. 

If that expensive sacking has taken place because of Motta ‘losing’ the locker room, there are perhaps more problems in the dressing room too and this isn’t just about the players. While Juve’s PR line is that selling Nicolo Fagioli and Danilo was Motta’s decision, was it really? Because they also suggest that Koopmeiners was a Motta signing but the truth is that the Old Lady had been considering a move for the Dutchman since March 2024, before the Italian-Brazilian was even signed. Quite the same applies for Khephren Thuram, who was being heavily linked with Juve weeks before Motta joined.

The Douglas Luiz transfer was done purely out of convenience to move on Enzo Barrenechea and Samuel Iling-Junior and that is something Aston Villa sporting director Monchi has already confirmed. Renato Veiga, Lloyd Kelly and Alberto Costa were signed out of immediate need too, as injuries had wrecked the backline. 

So, were all of these players Motta signings or club signings? While the ex-manager was inflexible, that is something Juve knew from his time at Bologna. If they did enough research, they’d have also known that his attack overperformed on xG numbers at the Rossoblu and it operated best against oppositions that pressed Bologna high. That tactical aspect changes when a manager manages Juve, when teams sit deeper and that was one of Motta’s weaknesses even last season and it was clear he would need time to improve that.

But he never had time for that in Turin as he was probably handed signings that aren’t his and some were made out of need and convenience. 

It isn’t to say that Motta is blameless. As mentioned above, he is not. But Juve are a confused club and while they want to modernise, they have no space of patience to make that happen. That is a pattern now being witnessed at three major Italian sides, who fail to know that project managers will always take time when they’re replacing man-managers or politician managers in the game. 

Perhaps, Juve just don’t know that they should stick with having a manager of the Allegri mould and seek short to medium term fixes. They operate in the harsh financial reality of the Serie A, where immediate monetary need is massive to compete. If they want to modernise, they should back that to the hilt instead of making reactionary decisions during the season. That is an identity crisis they are now faced with and they need to realise that soon.

Kaustubh Pandey I GIFN