“Winning isn’t important, it’s the only thing that counts” is the Juventus motto. But as Massimiliano Allegri sat on the advertising hoarding at the Stadio Olimpico as if at the end of the world and not before the rejoicing Juventus end, he knew in his bittersweet contemplation that winning the Coppa Italia for a record-breaking fifth time likely won’t be enough to save his job.
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In discordance with Juventus’ online fanbase, some of the ultras twirling flags and singing songs want him to remain in position. The Viking group were pictured with a banner a few weeks ago saying in rhyming couplets: “Mister Allegri devi restare, al Mondiale con te vogliamo andare!”. Stay for the away day in the USA. The Club World Cup next summer. But Allegri’s contract expires on June 30, 2025, right in the middle of the revamped tournament, and an extension isn’t on the cards.
As Allegri’s agent, Giovanni Branchini said in March, “We’ll see what Juventus have in mind. Anything can happen with this club.” He later clarified that his comment was no criticism of the executive team at Juventus, which is an overhauled and entirely different one from the board that rehired his client nearly three years ago after Allegri turned down Real Madrid. Florentino Perez wanted the man who won the league five years in a row, did the double four times and reached two Champions League finals. But Allegri chose Juventus so as not to uproot his young son and out of friendship with former chairman Andrea Agnelli. If he knew then what he knows now, would he have made the same decision?
The Juventus he joined in 2021 was, on the surface, still recognisable to the one he said ‘yes’ to in 2014. But as Agnelli was caught saying on a wiretap during the investigation that culminated in his resignation in the most damaging scandal since Calciopoli, what about “all the shit underneath”? Allegri’s detractors will argue that the highest-paid coach in the league should, these past three years, have achieved more with a team on the highest wage bill in Serie A. In normal conditions, it’s a solid case to make. But little has been normal about Juventus in his second spell.
It began with Cristiano Ronaldo leaving on the final day of the summer transfer window in 2021 (replaced by Moise Kean), a necessary exit in economic terms. Agnelli has insisted he has no regrets about the hubristic and misjudged signing of Ronaldo and the concatenation of bad decisions it provoked from the ousting of Beppe Marotta as chief executive, the promotion of Fabio Paratici and the cost of it all, which was compounded by a black swan event like the pandemic. Juventus are still paying for it. Only last month they were ordered to cough up €9.7m in back wages to Ronaldo. Halfway into Allegri’s first year back, Federico Chiesa tore his knee ligaments and so began the debate: why can’t he recapture the form he showed at the last Euros? Is it down to the injury? Allegri’s tactics? Or is he not the player the hype makes him out to be?
In the meantime, the defence that had been the bedrock of Juventus’ success over the past decade hit retirement age. Giorgio Chiellini moved to MLS after Italy failed to make the World Cup in Qatar. Leonardo Bonucci’s relationship with Allegri was as strained as in his first spell. And the succession plan for them was ripped up and thrown away. Centre-backs like Cristian Romero, Matthijs de Ligt, Merih Demiral and Radu Dragusin were sold off to support the cost of Ronaldo. It left Allegri reinventing Danilo and Alex Sandro; players signed as full-backs. He was in need of new leaders and new culture architects to replace his old captains.
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That’s why Paul Pogba was brought back to the club.
Stressed by off-field issues, he blew out his knee shortly after his return and did not take the club’s advice to immediately undergo surgery out of fear he’d miss the World Cup, a tournament that also weighed heavily on the minds of fellow new signings Angel Di Maria and Leandro Paredes. While they were away in Qatar, Juventus’ board, led by Agnelli, resigned as the Prisma scandal began to hit hard. People forget, but Juventus were in the title race at the time. They went to Napoli in mid-January on an eight-game winning streak in the hope a ninth in a row would narrow the gap to four points. People remember the 5-1 defeat instead. Soon afterwards, Juventus were docked 15 points, a penalty that was suspended in April, then reinstated and reduced to 10 points in May, a farcical series of events that makes the Premier League’s handling of PSR deductions look exemplary.
Allegri and his players could have spiralled but, to their credit, they committed to finishing as well as possible to give the club the chance of Champions League football in the event of an annulment, which never came. UEFA, still angry with Agnelli for his role in the Super League, issued Juventus with a one-year ban from Europe anyway. It was not contested. Juventus wished to turn over a new leaf.
It was, as John Elkann, the scion of the Agnelli dynasty, wrote in a letter to shareholders Exor, “year zero”. If you overlook the club’s decision to roll Adrien Rabiot’s contract on another season and make Arkadiusz Milik’s loan from Marseille permanent, Juventus only signed one player last summer; the USMNT international Timothy Weah. A window started by interim sporting director Pietro Manna ended with the belated installation of Cristiano Giuntoli, one of the masterminds behind Napoli’s first league title since 1990. Weah was acquired before Giuntoli’s arrival and has played less than expected after the departure of another veteran, Juan Cuadrado.
Still, as was the case last season, the only team to muster a challenge to the eventual champion was Juventus. Once again, it only lasted until January when a draw with Empoli preceded defeat in a prematurely billed decider with Inter Milan. Since then, Juventus have gone from one extreme to another; title form to relegation form. On the one hand, it is inexplicable given the team has only had to prepare for one game a week for most of the season. Sure, Juventus were short in midfield. Pogba is currently appealing a four-year ban after an anti-doping test he provided after the first game of the season came back positive. Nicolo Fagioli, the league’s reigning young player of the year, is available again for next week’s trip to Bologna after serving his ban for betting on football. Giuntoli’s January window — the loan of Carlos Alcaraz from Championship side Southampton and the signing of Tiago Djalo from Lille for €5m — did not perk up a veteran team forced to lean on the Next Gen for vim and vigour. Djalo, who joined having not played a single minute in Ligue 1 while recovering from knee surgery, has yet to feature for his new club.
The relative lack of intervention was explained in terms of how well the team had done under Allegri up until that point. At least as far as results were concerned. It was clear to anyone who watched the games or saw the data that Juventus had overperformed in the first half of the season. Since then, however, they have spiralled in a way that would have been excusable in last season’s circumstances. Fifteen points in 15 games?! How?! Why?!
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When Inter beat Juventus in February, it was their sixth straight win in a 13-game winning streak to start 2024. It was clear to Juventus’ players they couldn’t stay with them and their Scudetto dream was shattered. At the same time, they were so far ahead of Milan, Bologna, Atalanta and Roma that Champions League qualification felt assured, even more so when Serie A earned itself a fifth spot in next year’s competition. Simultaneously, in April, the first reports of Juventus lining up Thiago Motta to replace Allegri began to emerge. The confluence of these dynamics stripped Juventus’ league campaign of purpose and the weekend’s draw with a depleted and already relegated Salernitana made them underdogs going into Wednesday’s Coppa Italia final against an Atalanta side recently praised by Pep Guardiola. “Did you see them against Roma? An unbelievable performance,” he said.
Juventus unexpectedly neutralised Atalanta. Dusan Vlahovic scored the only goal of the game and while the performance was dubbed as quintessentially Allegri — 1-0 and by a nose — the win could have been by a greater margin as Juventus should have had a penalty and struck the bar. For six members of the starting XI — Vlahovic, Federico Gatti, Samuel Iling-Junior, Hans Nicolussi Caviglia, Andrea Cambiaso and Gleison Bremer — it was the first trophy of their Juventus careers. The list, frankly, tells its own story.
Could Motta do more with it?
Probably. He has taken a team with the 13th highest wage bill to third in Serie A and a place in Europe’s top-tier competition for the first time in 60 years. His football is avant-garde rather than archaic. But Allegri has a right to feel aggrieved at his treatment online and in general. He seemed to rage at the dying of the light at the Stadio Olimpico, tearing off his jacket and tie and shouting “Where’s Rocchi?”, the referee designator. He motioned for Giuntoli to get away from his staff and the players — many of whom seemed happy for Allegri — as they celebrated. He then clashed with the editor of Tuttosport, Guido Vaciago, after the game. “You’re a crap editor, a crap editor,” Allegri shouted. “You should write the truth in your paper, not what the club tells you to write.”
A blaze of glory this was not, nor did it quite hit the rock bottom of Jose Mourinho in Budapest. Allegri knows the writing is on the wall. “I leave…” he said before correcting himself. “If I leave, which you all seem to think I am, I leave a victorious Juventus.” A less victorious one than in 2019, that’s for sure. But one in the Champions League and the Club World Cup. One which, for all the debate about Allegri not improving players, can make money from Bremer and the kids he has integrated this season. It’s easy to write him off as finished. The same happened with Carlo Ancelotti and Claudio Ranieri in the past. As with Mourinho, his ends-justify-the-means tactics become unjustifiable when the ends are no longer what they used to be: Scudetti and Champions Leagues. Second-tier trophies are watermarks of decline, but they’re still trophies, snubbed and scoffed at by elements of the media and a fanbase that has lost context and an appreciation that what looks hard for these coaches now is hard only because they once made it look so easy.
Allegri might not be as good as he used to be, but as he hoists another trophy aloft, the 14th major honour of his career, he isn’t all bad either.
(Top photo: Image Photo Agency/Getty Images)