The habit had seemed, at least, to have been left behind. The propensity for clumsy interventions in his own penalty area that force Juventus to concede spot-kicks. The ungainly dive against Rennes on Nagida’s shot — which handed the French side the penalty for their 1-2 — is anything but an isolated incident. From the “save” in the Champions League against Leipzig to the reckless challenge on Piccoli five days later at Cagliari: three decisive lapses across 37 Juventus appearances, with a clean zero against his name in goals and assists. And no, it is not unfair to lean on the numbers. Not for a player who cost €51.5 million and arrived in the summer of 2024 from a spectacular Aston Villa season — 10 goals and 10 assists — only to produce, in the most literal sense, nothing.
“The Excuses Have Already Run Out”
The headline’s final phrase — “i bonus però sono già finiti” — carries the accumulated weight of Thiago Motta’s reluctance to use him, Tudor’s subsequent indifference, two managers who did not trust him and one who does. Spalletti has chosen to discard every preconception, partly because he knows the club’s constrained finances mean a superior deep-lying midfielder will not be delivered to him on demand, and partly because he is genuinely convinced that with the right directives he can restore the player who terrorised Premier League defences at Villa Park.
The Standard Liège Turning Point — “You Must Raise Your Level. If You Trust Me, You Will Be the Douglas Luiz of Birmingham”
There is a before and after in the Douglas Luiz story at Juventus, and Tuttosport identifies it precisely. The pre-season friendly against Standard Liège. Spalletti confronted him directly, without diplomatic softening: “You must raise your level because what you are giving us is not enough. If you trust me, you will become the Douglas Luiz of Birmingham again.” A direct challenge, a stated belief, a specific reference to the peak form the player can reach. From that moment, Spalletti has not removed him from the starting line-up.
The Brazil call-up under Ancelotti — his first in two years — was a potential confidence booster in that direction. And Spalletti’s words before the Cagliari away trip, when asked about Alessandro Romano, were the most explicit public endorsement the manager has offered any player this season: “Good playmakers are the ones who don’t drive their managers mad — and I have a very good playmaker in Douglas Luiz who carries out every single task that I and his teammates ask of him.”
The Gesture That Has Not Gone Unnoticed — and the Decision to Start at Lecce
After the Rennes penalty error, Douglas Luiz did something that Spalletti and the club have registered positively: he stepped forward, took responsibility publicly, and did not seek to minimise what happened. The specific nature of the gesture is in the second chapter, but the institutional reading is clear enough: a player who owns his mistakes, who does not deflect blame onto teammates or circumstances, is precisely the profile Spalletti has been trying to build across the squad since the Lazio post-mortem.
He starts again at Lecce this afternoon. The excuses — the previous managers, the adaptation period, the confidence issues — are exhausted. The standard has been set. The Birmingham version of Douglas Luiz is what Spalletti wants and what Juventus paid for. The next 90 minutes at the Via del Mare begin to answer whether that player still exists.
