Evaluating Juventus' Options for Covering for the Injured Giorgio Chiellini

As their season enters a critical juncture, Juventus have an unwelcome problem to deal with. The club has confirmed that Giorgio Chiellini, their world-class center back and vice-captain, will miss the next 20 days with a leg injury.

That span will cover both Saturday's top-of-the-table showdown with Napoli and the first leg of Juve's marquee Champions League round-of-16 tie with Bayern Munich. It will also potentially see him miss the Derby d'Italia clashes with Internazionale—one in the league and one in the Coppa Italia—at the end of February and beginning of March.

The injury has caused a selection problem for coach Massimiliano Allegri, who was already shorthanded at center back after Martin Caceres suffered a season-ending tear to his Achilles tendon against Genoa on Feb. 3. Now short of coverage at the back, Allergi really has only two choices to cover for his star defender as his team's season enters its most important stretch.

The first is to send in 21-year-old Daniele Rugani as a straight swap for Chiellini in a three-man back line.

Allegri has used the 3-5-2 almost exclusively since the beginning of the team's remarkable string of 14 straight league victories—a run that stretches to 18 wins in 20 in all competitions since Halloween.  It has provided the team with a defensive stability somewhat lacking at the beginning of the season, when they let in too many soft goals.

Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images

Since their streak started, they've recorded 13 clean sheets in 20 games in all competitions—including their last seven straight games.

Chiellini was a major contributor to that 656-minute long string of unblemished soccer. If Allegri stays with the 3-5-2, then Rugani is the obvious replacement. He would likely slot in to the right side of the back line. That's where he has been deployed for all of his game action this season. Andrea Barzagli would likely move over to cover the left, as he did in the several games in which Chiellini had been rested in favor of Caceres prior to Sunday's match against Frosinone.

This is the kind of situation Rugani was brought to Juventus for. Though young, he is not callow—he played every minute in Serie A last season with Empoli and did so without being booked. He has also been a mainstay in Italy's U21 setup for several years and started all three of their games at last summer's European Under-21 Championship.

Even so, he's never faced matches of this magnitude. Saturday's game against Napoli could well decide the fate of the Scudetto, and the Bayern game is going to be something greater than anything he's ever seen before.

This is not to say Rugani can't handle it. He's one of the best young defensive talents in the world and has shown great poise both on the field and off it as he has awaited his chance to get consistent playing time. It's not hard to see him taking his opportunity and excelling.

But Allegri does have another option to consider: switching out of the 3-5-2 and back to a four-man defensive line.

Such a change would almost certainly involve a line of, from left to right, Alex Sandro, Leonardo Bonucci, Barzagli and Stephan Lichtsteiner. It would send Rugani to the bench and likely anger fans about his continued lack of playing time, but it also has several merits.

The first and most obvious comes in tactical flexibility. If Allegri were to send all three of his healthy center backs onto the field as a back three, it would give him little to no wiggle room if something drastic—think an injury or a red card—were to happen. Keeping one of them on the bench would allow him some play should he need to shuffle his back line on the fly during the game.  

Massimo Pinca/Associated Press

Deploying four in the back would also allow Allegri to revert to his favored 4-3-1-2 formation. That system is what he rode to the Champions League final a year ago and was what he intended to be his default as the season began.

As well as the 3-5-2 has worked during this winning streak, it is fairly clear after almost two years in charge of Juve that Allegri doesn't get its subtleties as well as his predecessor, Antonio Conte. When he has used it, there have been occasions when Juve's attack has bogged down and become muddled in the midfield. By contrast, when he has used a 4-3-1-2, the team has tended to be much more dynamic.

This could be chalked up to the fact he had four absolute world-class midfielders running it last year—Arturo Vidal in the hole with Claudio Marchisio, Andrea Pirlo and Paul Pogba behind him. Vidal and Pirlo are gone, but Allegri has the pieces at his disposal to replicate his success with the formation.

Sunday's return of Roberto Pereyra—who had been out since October with a hamstring injury—was the biggest piece to fall into place. The Argentina international has played well when put into the trequartista role, and an attacking trio of him, Paulo Dybala and Alvaro Morata could be tough to match for any defense.

From a more game-focused perspective, the two big matches Juve have during Chiellini's period on the sidelines may end up lending themselves to having a trequartista on the field.

Napoli's defense, while much improved from last season, isn't on an elite level quite yet, and in their most difficult games they have tended to be vulnerable to attacks that come up the middle of the field.

Sampdoria engineered two of the four goals they scored against the Partenopei this season on attacks that originated centrally. Sassuolo did similarly in scoring two goals in their season-opening upset of Maurizio Sarri's men.

As for Bayern, they are going to be coming to Turin shorthanded. With center-backs Jerome Boateng and Javi Martinez both set to miss the game with injuries, this will be an opportune time to attack Bayern's back line through the middle. Earlier in the season they were prone to the occasional shock, with Arsenal and Borussia Monchengladbach both pulling upsets before the new year.

There isn't a truly bad choice here. On the one hand, Allegri can plug in one of the best young defenders in the world and let him play. On the other, he can play a system he is better versed in—one that can give him flexibility and that he can potentially use to exploit weaknesses in two big teams.

In the end, the better choice may be to shift to a 4-3-1-2 for the in-game flexibility if nothing else. The team could always revert to a 3-5-2 mid-game if the situation suits. Indeed, Juve are one of the only teams in the world that could call pulling a midfielder for a center-half sound tactical play instead of a desperation move.

But if the 3-5-2 comes out at the start, there aren't as many places for Allegri to go as the game progresses—especially if something happens to one of his center-backs. In the end, counterintuitive as it may sound given the run his team has been on with it, ditching the 3-5-2 for a four-man back line may indeed be his best solution to fill the hole Chiellni's absence leaves.