He lives for these challenges: rediscovering talent, taking it out of mothballs and giving it new life. The work Luciano Spalletti did with Marcelo Brozović at Inter is impossible to forget. Brozović was discovered by Piero Ausilio but was perpetually in limbo, without a role or a place in the small, great world of Inter. Then Spalletti arrived at the Pinetina, watched him up close and found a way to change his life. He saw him as a playmaker, gave him the keys to midfield, and from that moment the Croatian’s career changed. He did the same with Stanislav Lobotka at Napoli, who went from forgotten to hero of the Scudetto.
With Teun Koopmeiners, Tuttosport says, it is a film that repeats, though the gestation has been much longer. Among the first things Damien Comolli asked of Spalletti when he signed for Juventus was the revaluation of a “problem” worth €59 million.
The Giuntoli Inheritance
It was an uncomfortable legacy of Cristiano Giuntoli’s management: costly in terms of spending but also cumbersome technically. After all, how can you throw away an investment like that after a little more than a year? So, from November, a painstaking process began, which culminated in the magical night in Alkmaar.
It was a corner of paradise for Koopmeiners. He faced his brother, returned home amid honours and glory, and scored the goal that paved the way for Juventus, in front of his family, lifelong friends and his own people. It was an important result and emblematic of Teun’s maturing.
From Cremona to Alkmaar
The path began in Cremona on 1 November 2025, when Spalletti surprised everyone by using him as a left-sided centre-back in a back three. Spalletti had wanted him at Napoli and had studied him back in his AZ days. Until then he had not understood the reasons for Koopmeiners’s regression after the Bergamo-to-Turin move.
The explanation, Tuttosport says, is not just the absence of Gasperini and of such a deep technical and emotional reference point. There is more: on Teun weighed the money spent, the inability to settle into the context of a big team, and a role that was never found.
Persistence Rewarded
The summary line captures the theme. Spalletti, reassured also by the club’s trust in him, insisted on the Dutchman, and the perseverance is being rewarded. The same trust Carnevali declared at the shareholders’ meeting, when he said “Spalletti is the Juventus manager and we support him,” gave the manager the time that this kind of rehabilitation requires.
It fits the rest of the picture from this week. Tuttosport’s separate review of the season points to Koopmeiners, along with Douglas Luiz, as one of the midfield recoveries that Spalletti has engineered in the absence of Locatelli and Thuram. Moggi’s relay of Gasperini’s advice, that the Dutchman should be put on the pitch and allowed to find his own position, also lines up with the more fluid linking role he has had recently. His own line before the AZ match, “I am a midfielder, and the manager has told me so too,” completes the circle.
