Juventus: Pirlo’s experiment continues
Alvaro Morata spearheaded Juventus to a 2-0 win over Dynamo Kiev, but the first match in the Champions League still leaves Andrea Pirlo with some unanswered questions.
"From now on, we'll only switch the men and not the formation.” This sentence, uttered by Juventus manager Andrea Pirlo in his pre-game presser ahead of his men’s match in Rome, turned out to be a ‘white lie’.
His Juventus, in fact, has alternated not only men and formations but also convincing performances to questionable ones. An effervescent start against Sampdoria was followed by two come-from-behind draws on the field against Roma and Crotone, and now a convincing 2-0 win in Kiev, pointing to the fact that the ‘Juventus Project’ is quite the ‘Work in Progress’ for Mister Pirlo.
Examining the first month of Pirlo as Juventus coach, one is left with the impression that there are several issues the man from Brescia is grappling with, some of which are self-inflicted.
For one, Pirlo continues to use real competition to conduct experiments. True, the compressed schedule has not afforded Serie A clubs the time to organize a series of friendlies to test out tactics, but Mr. Pirlo’s insistence on revolutionizing men has turned his christening as coach into a bonafide Baptism By Fire. From Gianluca Frabotta's surprising start in a 3-5-2 against Sampdoria, to Manolo Portanova's start in a 4-3-3 in Crotone, to Alvaro Morata and Federico Chiesa making their respective debuts two days after their transfers, Pirlo hasn't shied away from taking bold decisions. Bold decisions, one can counter, which have come at a cost: Juventus earned a point in Rome after Adrien Rabiot’s expulsion, but lost two in a must-win match against Crotone.
Taking cue from organizational theorist Bruce Tuckman’s famous four stages of team development (namely: forming, storming, norming and performing) it can be said that this Juventus is barely in the forming stage. After three game weeks (one of which Juventus didn’t play) the Bianconeri saw off Mattia De Sciglio and Douglas Costa, and welcomed Chiesa who didn’t join the team until after a two week International break. Formation, starting line up, mechanisms are all up in the air: it’s surprising that Pirlo is not dealing with upheavals within the group.
To his credit, he’s been able to manage them thus far.
Take Paulo Dybala. The Argentine, who re-injured his hamstring in the fateful elimination to Lyon on August 7, gathered his first cap this season as a substitute in Kiev after voicing concern for not featuring in the previous match against Crotone. “Dybala was supposed to play a few minutes but we were short handed,” explained Pirlo after the game in Calabria. Pirlo’s boldness and personality showed when he stuck to his guns, benching la Joya again in Kiev. The field proved that it was the right decision: Dybala mustered an insipid performance.
As the team moves through the forming and storming phases, Pirlo will likely find the right ‘go-to’ formation and man selection. For the former, the Juventus seen in Kiev defended with a 4-4-2 and switched to a 3-4-1-2 when attacking, with the wingers (Chiesa and Cuadrado in this case) joining the attack on occasion.
As the formation solidifies so will man selection, and in turn, so will the starting XI’s hierarchy. The newly-acquired Chiesa has impressed by getting into space very well, while Morata is on a scoring streak (3 goals in the last two matches) and is showing that he’s capable of handling that department all by himself. As the team will move into the storming phase, however, Pirlo will have to deal with questions like: how will personalities and bruised egos be managed? How many starts from the bench will Dybala accept? Will Cristiano Ronaldo feature every match when he returns? Can Juventus afford to keep in-form players like Chiesa and Morata on the bench? Ramsay has interpreted the trequartista role like no other - who can back him up?
COVID (Ronaldo and McKennie, so far) and injuries (Chiellini's hamstring pull being the latest) may be blessings in disguise, allowing the Brescian to rotate his men in order to keep a healthy dose of his secret ingredient: enthusiasm. Pirlo can pair that ingredient with world class talent like Ronaldo and Matthijs De Ligt, and with the chemistry of the 2014-15 season when il Maestro, Gigi Buffon, Giorgio Chiellini, Leonardo Bonucci and Morata were the main characters in a memorable run that fell shy of a historical treble.
Origially published on FootballItalia, on October 21, 2020
Comments
Post a Comment