You can’t compare a small tournament to a season with multiple competitions. Conte has continually proven, with a couple teams, that he can’t maintain his teams in multiple competitions. He’s more suited to the national tram due to its small formatted and limited game format. It works better for him and his style.
This is all true, but.......take a look at those names on the injury list. How many are real surprises?
Juventus U-17s win the group at the Futures Cup in Amsterdam despite losing the opening match to Ajax 1-0. They move into the semi-finals tomorrow playing Athletico Madrid U-17s. Ajax play Anderlecht in the other match. Don't know if there will be any streams.
Barzagli, Chiellini, Khedira, and Mandzukic should not have been depended on as much as Juve did. The same will happen again. Problematically these players will be difficult and expensive to replace. Douglas Costa was somewhat injury prone as well and certainly does not offer any guarantees. In terms of the others, Spinnazola, Cancelo, Cuadrado, and Emre Can, Juve got unlucky with their surgeries. Then you have Dybala who has not been the same player since his injury at the beginning of 2018. Plus, the whole Benatia situation was a surprise and completely mishandled. That's too many players to have injuried and out of form for nearly all or at least a good chunk of the season. So for as strong as this Juve team is on paper, half the team failed to really contribute which drained the half that did. Ajax are a very talented since, at the same time they faced a very physically depleted Juve.
Well......Spina was injured when we brought him back. Can missed nearly the entire second half of the EPL season last year. The other 2 I will give you, but that is 7 of the 9 under discussion with histories of major injury problems. And we are brining Ramsey in next season! 2 of the injury prone ones are CBs....and we go and sell Benatia! And give Milan Caldara to get BonBon back. BTW, Caldara has injury issues as well. Something is wrong in Italy and with our training/physios in particular. Way too many injuries that are long lasting for normal. even with a slew of players with injury histories.
I'm certainly no Allegri apologist, but this is why it's hard to judge him based on this season. He never had close to a full squad for very long. It's difficult to establish a style or way of playing with so many key players consistently injured. Juve's medical staff and training regime undid this squad. It made for a very unwatchable season. On top of replacing the likes of Chiellini, Mandzukic, improving the midfield, the club have to improve the medical/training side of things.
Agreed. My one real complaint about Max this season is he never really solved the Dybala problem created by the arrival of CR7. As a result, Dybala and the team suffered enormously from this issue. My problem is more with the medical staff and the front office for ignoring the aging nature of our defense and the obvious injury issues with so many of the players we have signed or are already here. No one in management should have been surprised that the players that ended up injured for long periods were the same ones with injury issues in the past. Max can only play who is available to him. Our management needs to factor injury history into who we buy. And they need to hire a better medical staff.
Milan suffered from persistent fitness problems during Allegri's tenure as well. I don't know if that means anything either way, but I also don't think it should be used as an excuse, either.
Our injury situation was worse under Conte. It is part of the game. Max at least deals with it & not make excuses.
Its pretty difficult for me to fault or criticize Max Allegri. Especially after he won 5 straight scudetti and losing a total of 18 league games ever since he took over. 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17 2017–18 2018–19 No one in Italy has ever done this and I doubt he will lose any more games this season unless he starts all his reserves. The CL was an almost impossible trophy to achieve to begin with so I think Allegri should stay.
IIRC, he did take his training and medical staff with him, and our injuries have reduced since. But they need to be acutely aware of that sort of thing, so it would make no sense to keep a team that isn't doing a great job. Roma's injury stats have significantly reduced since they revamped their performance and rehab team with the exos methodology.
Injuries though come with the territory. When you are playing league, CL and Coppa Italia games all season and everyone is out to beat Juventus at all costs, someone is bound to get injured.
Yes Falvo, injuries happen. Teams keep statistics on injury occurrences and time away from the pitch. They would have to be aware of whether the medical staff is performing up to certain standards. Roma's injury profile inclusive of incidence and time on the treatment table, reduced by 30% when they revamped their performed and rehab system with more modern evidence based methods. That was the year Salah burst through and was eventually sold for a profit. Both Roma and Liverpool use the same system these days. So basically, what I'm saying is that if Allegri's team is failing, Juve management would be aware of it and I doubt they'd stay idle for long. Milan had a lot more injuries with his team as well. It could also relate to his training methods, recovery tubes time frames, rotation, etc. I'm pretty sure that a club that isn't shy on spending when and where needed will let the trend continue for long though. Milan's medical and training staff just spent a couple hundred thousand on a system that can tell hydration and rest levels on players via pupil response to light. As a result they can know who's been partying hard before practice and games and will allocate them accordingly in training sessions. I'm sure they're not the only one with this technology.
Injuries or not, we should not use that as an excuse to losing to a young team like Ajax at home. We still cant do some simple things like defend corners and counter attack.
Winning the scudetto when your second team can compete for a Champions League place in the league you win, and where no one else is even close to your payroll isn't impressive. I don't care if you do it once, five times or ten times. The real barometer for evaluating a manager's success with this club is in Champions League. In five seasons since Allegri's been in charge, only twice has he managed to win where his team wasn't favored, against Real and Barca in the knockout stages. This year, losing out to Ajax was an abject failure. We also have very disappointing losses against Bayern and Real during his tenure. He's overrated and the beneficiary of having inherited a juggernaut of a club with no domestic rivals. If there is a viable alternative, take it. I am so tired of watching the piss poor football we play under this guy with the knowledge that we will never win a Champions League with his style of play.
He has had 5 good games in KO stages... RM 2-1 at home in 2015 Barcea 3-0 at home in 2017 Tottenham away 2-1 in 2018 RM 3-1 away in 2018 Atleti 3-0 home in 2019 And 3 of these games, the 1st leg was a disaster he came back from However his list of epic failures & embarrassments are such a long list, dont even need to remind everyone. Its funny people knit pick 2 bad games Conte had with a much lesser squad but yea lets keep declining under Allegri and be a laughing stock of Europe and meme pages
Only three Italian teams have won the CL and Inter was the last one , 9 years ago. Juventus has won 2 in their history and they aren't considered a crap team just because they haven't won the trophy in 23 years. Not too many teams have won it and its not an easy trophy to win. Unless Tottenham Hotspur win it this year which I doubt, a total of only 22 teams across Europe have won it since 1955 and the same 5-6 teams have won it in the last 20. I just don't believe winning the CL is the only way to measure success of a coach or a franchise.
If we are trying to understand why Juve failed over two legs vs Ajax, injuries play a huge part of it. This isn't meant to be an excuse but more an honest assessment. Next year if Juve are in a CL QF with half the team injured especially key starters, I highly doubt they will advance regardless of who the coach is. Unlike a league campaign, the CL requires nearly perfect conditions on the day of big matches to win it. Even then, luck needs to be on the team's side.
Yup. Even for sides with large squads, there are too many matches particularly when you factor in international tournaments. The quality of play has suffered as a result. Ironically, despite all those games, the barometer in which we judge big clubs is a short tournament in the form of this CL. One injury filled match or piece of bad luck and the season is a failure. It renders all those other games as somewhat meaningless. The domestic and European format is ready for a change. Both domestic and European games are getting stale and frustrating.
Yeah and I forgot to post the national team games and qualifiers. Juventus, traditionally has always had national team players foreign and domestic. I think most recently, CR7 was injured while on duty for Portugal. Those are other games that are pretty intense so of course there is an injury risk. Its even worse if those players play in a WC or Euro tournament in the same year.
Mandzukic and Chiellini would have provided a bit more muscle that might have offset that weakness in the midfield but we lost it in the midfield. Injuries did not help but that is not why we lost it.
HOPE for the future! Juve won the Futures Trophy in Amsterdam, beating the Ajax u-17 team 2-1. Highlights are here: Speaking of injuries, it's a fact of life in football. Ajax have been surprisingly fortunate this season. Despite having a small 15 player rotation, there have been no significant injuries to first team players. I can't remember a player missing more than a game or two despite Ajax playing a really long season with the CL qualifiers.
With Khedira out all year, Emre Can hurt for half, and Bentancur filling in, Pjanic and Matuidi have been forced to play nearly all matches with very little rest for much of the season. It looked like it took a toll on both of them. They both did very well to press Ajax high for the first half along with Emre Can. The lack of technical quality in all phases did show as Juve as a team struggled to use the ball well after recovering it. As a result, the midfield just ran out of steam by the 2nd half. Pjanic in particular is one of the Juve players that have run the most this season and it showed in the 2nd half. He looked exhausted. So when Ajax took it to another gear in the 2nd half, Juve's midfield three just couldn't match them. Juve certainly need more quality in midfield, but they also have to avoid injuries in that area. Otherwise whoever starts will be physically exhausted by the 2nd half of the season.
They have a fraction of our payroll. Injuries are no excuse. But for Chiellini, no key player missed the Ajax fixtures.