Lucumì — “Here You Have to Be Ready. Winning Mentality, Calm and Confidence”
The man who most needed a clean sheet and an uncontroversial performance delivered both. Lucumì’s DAZN and Sky reactions have a measured, team-first quality that was notably absent from the more individual register of his Lazio post-match. On the collective dynamic: “All my teammates and the manager have helped me to adapt. At Juventus you have to always be ready — it is a big club. I hope this victory is the first of many, to climb as high as possible in the table.”
On the psychological significance of the result: “It was very important to win today — united squad, we knew what we had to do. If we hadn’t won, talking about it would have been pointless. Today everyone had the winning mentality to have calm and gain confidence. Happy — but we’re already thinking about the next match to climb the table and get closer to the objectives we have here at Juventus.”
The tactical self-awareness is the most substantive element of his analysis: “We need to be ready for the action before the ball arrives — a bit of vision, knowing already where to play. In Italy teams come at you hard. If you control the ball and then think about what to do, you lose too much time — like in the second half when we lost important balls and they gained confidence. We defended well but we should have managed the game differently in the second half.” On the formation change: “When you’re at Juventus you have to be available to play wherever the manager says.”
The title’s “Qui devi esserlo” — “Here you have to be it” — captures Lucumì’s definition of what the Juventus shirt demands: not simply good players, but players who can perform to the level the shirt requires, on every occasion, regardless of external pressure. It is the implicit answer to the Bremer episode and to the week of crisis commentary that preceded this match.
Douglas Luiz — “The Free-Kick? We Work on It a Lot”
The second chapter delivers the detail on Douglas Luiz’s goal — the direct free-kick that made it 2-0 and finally gave Juventus the breathing room the result needed. His answer on the routine: “The free-kick? We work on it a lot.” The brevity is characteristic, but the context adds meaning: the player who was “inexplicable” in the Rennes match ratings, who had Spalletti conditionally praising his “piedino” only if he commits — responding with a direct set-piece goal at exactly the moment it was needed. The Birmingham version Spalletti invoked has made a brief but timely appearance.
McKennie — “Many Can Talk Outside. We Could Have Done Better But the Important Thing Was to Win”
The third chapter gives McKennie the most pointed phrase of the evening, directed without naming names at the week’s noise: “Many can talk outside.” The American midfielder — who scored the first goal at Lecce and has been one of the more consistent performers in the 3-5-2 system — draws the line between dressing-room reality and external commentary. The squad knows what happened at Lazio. They know what the second half against Rennes and the second half against Lecce still revealed. And they are working on it internally, without the need to adjudicate against commentary from former players and pundits. “We could have done better but the important thing was to win.”
