Juventus Coach Massimiliano Allegri Made a Huge Mistake vs. Bayern Munich

On March 16, Juventus will go to the Allianz Arena in Munich for the second leg of their UEFA Champions League round-of-16 tie with Bayern Munich with a puncher's chance to pull an upset and advance to the quarterfinals.

After getting dominated for an hour in Tuesday's first leg and falling behind 2-0, the Bianconeri rallied to secure a 2-2 draw and keep themselves in the contest.

Juve coach Massimiliano Allegri has been lauded for substitutions he made in the second half that put his side back into the match. Coming on for an ailing Claudio Marchisio at the half, Hernanes had his best game in a Juventus jersey. The subsequent subs—Stefano Sturaro and Alvaro Morata—combined to create the equalizing goal.

Consider the take of ESPN FC's Mina Rzouki, who in a post-match piece said: "Few tacticians are so capable of changing the face of the game from the bench." It's clear people have given Allegri most of the credit for the turnaround.

But while Allegri's adjustments were certainly commendable and indeed had a major impact, something is being overlooked: why Juventus were in such dire straits to begin with. Rzouki, in her piece, placed the blame squarely on the players, using words such as "cowardly" and "terrified" to describe their performances for the first 60 minutes of the game.

Juve's players certainly looked nervous in the game's opening phases, but that isn't the only reason. Allegri's second-half machinations fixed a problem that was largely of his own making.

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The coach deployed his team in the same flat 4-4-2 formation he used against Napoli 10 days earlier. He needs to answer questions as to why.

Why, for instance, would he use a system he had only ever used once. Even with Giorgio Chiellini out, Allegri could have used the 3-5-2 that fueled his team's 15-match unbeaten run—and most of their four-year title reign—with a back three of Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci and Daniele Rugani, who is only 21 but might be the best defensive prospect in the world.

If he didn't want to use Rugani, he could have used the 4-3-1-2 he used to great effect from the middle of last year on. Instead, he used a formation that is both unfamiliar and a poor fit for the players he had available, particularly on the left side of midfield, where Paul Pogba was forced into a strange role.

Why would he make this decision in this, the biggest game of the year? Apparently to shoehorn Juan Cuadrado in the side. In doing so, he not only deployed his team in a formation that was easy for Bayern to attack, but he missed the opportunity to take advantage of Bayern's key weakness.

The German giants were missing a phalanx of defenders. Holger Badstuber, Jerome Boateng and Javi Martinez were all out injured. Mehdi Benatia had only just returned from a long spell on the shelf. That forced Pep Guardiola to send out a center-back pairing of David Alaba—an excellent player but primarily a left-back in the past few years—and Joshua Kimmich, who is more naturally a midfielder and had never experienced the pressure of a Champions League knockout game before.

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The opening seemed clear: Attack the center. Allegri's 4-3-1-2 appeared to be the perfect fit. Put a player with creativity and pace, such as Roberto Pereyra, in the hole behind a strike pair, ram the ball down Bayern's throat and see whether their pairing—Kimmich in particular—would crumble.

Instead, Allegri opted for a wide player in Cuadrado.

Regular readers know this author has been critical of him this season, and those criticisms will be reiterated here. Juan Cuadrado is not as good as people think he is.

He's flashy, he's fast and he makes people go "ooooh!" But he rarely produces anything of substance. After his umpteenth stepover, he's often waited too long for his next move to be dangerous or gets straight-up dispossessed. Of the three goals he's scored this season, two of them seemed somewhat fortunate.

When he does get opportunities, like he did when he found himself one-on-one with Manuel Neuer in the 67th minute, he simply makes the wrong choices. Instead of firing hard and low to beat the Germany international, he fired high, allowing the 'keeper to parry.

But aside from what people may think about the way he plays, starting him on Tuesday simply wasn't the right move. The Bavarians were weak in the center—that was where to attack them. A wide player wasn't the player to use, and his inclusion forced the team into two flat banks of four that lacked any real dynamism and were easy to pin back deep for a Bayern team in rhythm.

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What's even more surprising is this is unlike Allegri. Over the course of his career, he has come up with fantastic setups for big games. AC Milan's 4-0 win over Arsenal in the first leg of the round of 16 in 2011-12, their 2-0 win over Barcelona at the same stage the next year and the second leg of this round last year against Borussia Dortmund were all tactical masterstrokes. For him to put up such a stinker in such a situation is out of character.

When Allegri finally changed things and the ball started moving through the middle more, things changed. Kimmich—the man Allegri should have been targeting from the beginning—crumbled twice, fluffing a clearance ahead of Juve's first goal and losing Sturaro's run on the equalizer.

Those changes Allegri did make were commendable. But the question remains whether he should have been in the situation he was 55 minutes in. Bayern certainly took the game to Juve for the first two-thirds of the match, but Allegri's decisions let them.

Had he attacked Bayern's major vulnerability—one that won't be as such in the next leg as players recover—from the get-go, this game could have been different and Juve could have had a much easier task before them in Munich.

As much credit as he gets for engineering a comeback, he bears a good amount of responsibility for what happened before.