Juventus' Champions League Luck Runs out After Group of Death Draw
Everyone's luck has to end sometime. On Thursday, Juventus' charmed Champions League life finally ran its course.
Starting from December 15 of last year, the Bianconeri were on a terrific run of fortune. Of the seven teams they could potentially have played in the round of 16 in the Champions League knockout phase, current form said three of them offered good chances of progressing and four were likely certain death.
They got one of the three: a struggling Borussia Dortmund team that they squeaked past 2-1 in the first leg before wiping them out with a 3-0 away victory in the return. When the quarterfinal draw came up later that week, Juve got the best possible matchup: a Monaco side that had only scored seven goals in its eight games—three of which had come in one match.
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The two best defenses in the tournament threw up stone walls, and a questionable first-leg penalty call was the only difference in the 1-0 aggregate.
Going into a draw with Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich in the semis, memes like these posted on the Daily Mirror's web site flew around the Internet. But Lady Luck was kind again—Juve got the easiest of the three giants: a Real side that was without key cog Luka Modric and slipping in form.
Three weeks and some heroics from the likes of Alvaro Morata and Stefano Sturaro later, Juve were in the final on the back of a 3-2 aggregate win.
Juve's play during the knockout stages was generally fantastic, of that there is no doubt. But in the Champions League, luck in the draw is just as important as playing well on the field. Juve's was abnormally good last year, and that couldn't possibly have lasted forever. In Thursday's group stage draw, their coach finally turned into a pumpkin.
This year's rule change—which put the title holders and the champions from the top seven European leagues into Pot 1, or the top eight if the winner of the title also won their league—was going make this draw different for Juve. Under last year's system they would have been solidly in the middle of Pot 2 rather than in Pot 1, which would have made facing the likes of Barcelona, Chelsea or Bayern Munich a distinct possibility.
Not that the matchups they were looking at from Pot 2 would have been gimmes.
Staring them in the face were six teams with higher UEFA coefficients including both Madrid teams, Manchester United, Arsenal, Valencia and Porto. Manchester City was lower in the coefficient rankings, but they had won the English Premier League two of the last four seasons and had leaped out of the gate this season like someone had poked them with a cattle prod.
The Pot 2 matchup was always going to be rough. Getting Manchester City is probably better than Real Madrid or Atletico, but the more desirable options would have been offensively challenged Arsenal, a Man U team that is still pulling itself together under Louis van Gaal or a Porto club that had just been raided of top talent like Jackson Martinez and Alex Sandro.
Having problems with a second-seeded team won't necessarily be a shock. For Juve, it was the third and fourth pots that housed the biggest potholes, the teams that could stun them if given the chance.
Now they may need a trip to the body shop.
Of the seven teams they could have been matched with in Pot 3—competition rules prohibit two teams from one league in one group, so Roma could not have been drawn with them—Sevilla was the nightmare scenario. The Andalusian outfit has won the Europa League two years running. That's a massive amount of experience going deep into European competition.
Even without Carlos Bacca, who moved to AC Milan this summer, Sevilla will have firepower to spare with Kevin Gameiro leading the line and a pair of former Juventini—Ciro Immobile and the recently arrived Fernando Llorente, as confirmed Thursday by Juventus (h/t Football Italia)—taking places up top while Argentina international Ever Banega gives them service. Jose Antonio Reyes and Michael Krohn-Dehli provide added backbone in midfield.
The Rojiblancos also boast one of the hottest coaches in Europe in Unai Emery, who can coach circles around anyone when he's on his best day. The tactical matchup between him and Massimiliano Allegri will surely be fascinating.
None of the other six teams in that pot pose the same kind of threat to Juve.
Shakhtar Donetsk lost top goalscorer Luiz Adriano and midfielder Douglas Costa this summer and are about to embark on a second season of nomadic existence after their imposing home, the Donbass Arena, was engulfed by the armed conflict in Ukraine.
Olympiakos and Galatasaray have claimed scalps against Juve in the last two editions of this competition, but both loses were as much self-inflicted by Juve as they were earned by the opposition. They are easily superior to them, as well as Dynamo Kiev, Lyon and CSKA Moscow.
Pot 4 was the cruelest blow. Traditionally inhabited by minnows, there were a pair of sharks to watch out for.
Both from Germany, Wolfsburg and Borussia Monchengladbach were in Pot 4 due to prolonged absences from European competition and represented dangerous land mines. While Juve managed to avoid the particularly dangerous Wolfsburg, they weren't able to miss the Foals, who finished a convincing third in the Bundesliga and made the knockout rounds of the Europa only to fall to Sevilla.
While it is not nearly the worst-case scenario of this draw, it's definitely the toughest route any of the top seeds have to face. On paper Juve are better than Sevilla and Gladbach. They are at the very least the equal of City. But there are other factors to consider.
What makes this draw so difficult is not only the quality of the opposition—which is very high—but also the state of the Bianconeri themselves. Juve lost a trio of major contributors this summer in Carlos Tevez, Andrea Pirlo and Arturo Vidal. All three played a huge role in their run to last year's final.
Tevez scored seven times; those goals included the clincher in a must-win group game against Malmo, three against Borussia Dortmund and the penalty that proved the difference in the 2-1 first-leg win over Real Madrid and probably was decisive in the tie as a whole. Pirlo dropped in a textbook free kick in a crunch home win over Olympiakos in the group stage, and Vidal's penalty was the only goal either team scored in the quarterfinal.
They reloaded with the likes of Paulo Dybala, Mario Mandzukic, Sami Khedira and Sandro. But while the team isn't necessarily worse, they're certainly different, and they're going to need time to produce the same kind of cohesion of last year's squad, which developed virtually unchanged in the three years prior under Antonio Conte.
Apart from the new arrivals, injured striker Alvaro Morata has yet to play a competitive game, and star midfielder Claudio Marchisio is nursing a minor knock of his own. The hodgepodge of newbies, youngsters and reserves that participated in Sunday's shocking opening loss to Udinese clearly didn't have the chemistry of the teams that have lorded over Serie A with an iron fist over the last four seasons.
An easier draw would have been a boon to this team. Juve's presumed first unit has the talent to become a juggernaut, but they need time to learn to play as one. The competition opens three weeks from now, and one of those weeks will be taken up by the international break, further limiting the time this team has to gel.
No one is saying that Juve will be crashing out to the Europa League the way they did two years ago. On paper they are still very much favorites to go through. Fans can also take solace in the fact that the defensive unit—the best in Europe over the last four seasons and arguably the most important aspect of the team—remains unchanged, perhaps even augmented by the arrival of Sandro and of wunderkind Daniele Rugani.
But this draw is going to force Juve to grow up in a hurry.
They start the group with a trip to the Etihad, and their home games are front-loaded. They end on December 8 with a trip to Seville that could be the difference between advancement or elimination. Any hope that the qualifying process would be easier on the nerves than the last three have been can be considered dashed.
Juventus made the final last year because they played fantastic football, but luck was a big factor as well. That luck has finally run out and put Juventus into the Group of Death. Now it's time for them to truly prove that they have what it takes to claim a full-time seat at Europe's big table.
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