It’s been 10 years since a team other than Juventus has won Serie A. But,
with almost half the season gone and now under the management of Andrea Pirlo,
the bianconeri are well off the pace in Italy.
So, what’s going wrong?
It’s best to start with the coach. Normally it’s hard to say specifically what a coach
wants to do. As viewers, we can watch a team and draw inferences, but we aren’t in the dressing
room or on the training pitch. But, with Pirlo it’s different. Weeks before he got the Juve job,
Pirlo presented his football thesis to the Italian finishing school for top-flight
coaches in Coverciano. And it’s useful; it describes how he wants his team to play.
Here are the key points:
He’s influenced by Cruyff and Guardiola’s Barcelona sides, van Gaal’s Ajax,
Ancellotti’s AC Milan, and Conte’s Juventus, and wants to play a “total and collective” style.
In real terms, this articulates one of his philosophies, and that of his assistant coach
and a former instructor at Coverciano, Antonio Gagliardi: “a role in modern football is no longer
a position, but a function” – in other worse: players must be versatile, adaptative, and fulfil
a function that meets their set of skills, not simply where they start when the whistle blows.
This means that Pirlo expects his players to be fluid, to interchange positions and move around
the pitch. Football should move away from static team shapes and become more about a “dynamic
occupation of positions that are functional to the principles behind our playing model.”
So, while Pirlo’s Juventus line up in a 4-2-3-1,
the team’s shape looks more like a 4-4-2 in defence and a 3-2-5 in attack, with one full-back
tucking inside to make a back three and the other pushing up high to act as a kind of winger.
The team is supposed to control the ball and press in a well-ordered but
aggressive way to regain possession when it’s lost, ideally within five seconds
before the opposition can build momentum or get into its proper defensive shape.
Pirlo also adheres to the build-up principle described by the acronym
CARP, which translated into English stands for build-up,
width, penetration into the final third, and stretching the play behind the opposition defence.
He wants to build up from the back, using the keeper to add an additional passing option.
Every player should have four options around them, one behind,
two laterally, and one ahead, ideally between the lines.
This is why rotation is so important, whether that is to receive the ball or
to drag a marker away to allow space for a teammate. In this example,
a winger moving in field to a central midfield position, and a central midfielder moving wide,
creates space for the overlapping full back by pulling markers away from their zones.
Key to this are third-man runs, something that
Pirlo has tried to drill into his teams and midfielders, like Aaron Ramsey especially.
A third man runner is one who is near the play, but makes a break beyond the opposition line
to arrive into space at the same time the ball does from a passer
who has themselves just received the ball. So, player A passes to B as C sets off,
meaning that C is in space between or behind the lines when they receive the pass from B. It’s hard
to defend these runs when they’re effectively made because – instinctively - defenders are
drawn to the ball, while the third man runner has all the momentum in the opposite direction.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that Pirlo believes in technical ability and expressive,
even improvised play in the attacking third. While systems and structures are necessary,
individual creativity and skill is often the key to unlocking a packed defence.
So, we know what Pirlo wants Juve to do, but is this actually reflected in the team’s play?
And if so, why isn’t it working?
Well, the good news for Juventus fans is that – actually - it mostly is. Only in two games
this season has their opponent’s expected goals exceeded theirs: during the losses to
Fiorentina and Inter Milan. Otherwise, even in the matches drawn, five of which came in the opening
eight fixtures, Juventus should have scored more than their opponents, at least according to xG.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Pirlo may have inherited the most prestigious job in
Italian football, the task was tougher than it appeared. Juventus only won
Serie A in 2019/20 by one point, while four teams scored more goals
and two conceded fewer – the first time that’s happened in nine years.
But Juventus are a team in transition. Last season, Ronaldo scored 31 of their 76 league
goals; this season so far it’s 15 of 35. And they’re still very reliant on him. Tellingly,
he missed the draws against Crotone and Hellas Verona, two of the worst results
of the season. Nevertheless, Juventus are bringing in younger players who can provide
reinforcement – like Federico Chiesa and Dejan Kulusevski – and this is important.
On loan Weston McKennie has also excelled, young left back Gianluca Frabbotta is benefitting from
sustained selection and Mattias de Ligt, while blighted by injury this season,
is gradually getting over his shaky start to Serie A life.
Added to which, Juventus have a clear tactical plan.
They’ve gone from being the eighth most pressing team in Serie A last season to the third most
so far this term, and they’ve improved their deep completions from eighth in the league
to second – in other words, they’ve significantly improved the relative
frequency with which they find players in dangerous positions near the opposition goal.
Both are key tenets of Pirlo’s philosophy, and his team are getting them right. However,
as James Horncastle wrote in a recent article for The Athletic,
“For all the faith shown in Pirlo, he has to win” and his efforts to mould the team
tactically and stylistically will, of course, have to be accompanied by material success.