The result at the Luigi Ferraris is Juventus’s worst of the season. Genoa 2-0, the bianconeri falling flat after their single-match recovery at Lecce, the table now showing 14 points from 10 matches — joint with Napoli, who arrive on Saturday and have now drawn level. It is back to 14 points, back to eighth place, back to the fundamental questions that the Lecce win briefly suspended. Spalletti on DAZN does not look for cover.
“The First Thing to Do Is Apologise to the Supporters”
The opening statement is the most direct public acknowledgement of failure Spalletti has offered this season, including after the 0-3 against Lazio: “First of all you apologise to the supporters for the performance — that is the first thing to do. Then everything that can be said now might come out wrong and it is also difficult to say. So there is definitely a need for a little time to get the situation clearly in focus. It is difficult to talk about the fact that Baldanzi found space behind our midfielders and beneath our defensive line — because we never managed to find him, to break through, to find the right balance to go at him. But beyond that we contributed to their goals ourselves. In the first half some very important chances fell to us to score and we were not capable. You struggle a bit to accept the current reasoning about the level of running, of strength, of duelling in the phases of the game. Because tonight we lost them in front, behind, everywhere. And this — sooner or later — we have to come to an agreement on: we have to understand that the physical confrontation, the fight, the battle has to be raised.”
“We Put In Little of Everything — But We Need to See if These Players Even Have That Everything”
The second passage is the single most alarming thing Spalletti has said publicly about his squad in his entire tenure. More alarming even than “does the squad follow me? Today I don’t know” after Lazio. That question was about followership. This one is about fundamental capacity: “It comes out that we put little of everything in. But you have to go and see if at this moment these players have that ‘everything’ to give. Because otherwise you would have to take some very deep steps backwards to understand the current situation. Effectively — very little effort, very little fight. And this is a theme we have been addressing since the start of the year. Now we have to become aware of it and put something more in. Assuming they have something more to put in, from the perspective of fighting and physicality. I want to go back and watch it carefully, to understand what happened — because in the last match three days ago for an hour the attitude had been different.”
What Worries Him About Napoli — “It’s Hard to Make Players Understand Where Football Has Gone”
The third passage is the most tactically honest assessment of the preparation crisis: “What worries me is that it’s a bit hard to make players understand where football has gone, because football has taken a step forward in this respect. Before you win, you have to win these duels, these assaults that every team throws at you. That’s how it is now. When we try to reproduce it in training it becomes difficult to get players to reach this level. And we haven’t really been training, because the number of players is thin and we don’t have logical replacements to rebalance the fatigue. That worries me a little. But clearly each time you have to take a small step forward.”
On the Napoli match and his personal feelings about returning to the city where he won the Scudetto: “I will experience it as always with great emotion, great humanity, beauty, pleasure and strong feeling towards a place I owe a great deal — a city that is impossible not to love when you are inside it. Especially when you manage to win a championship there.”
