As Juventus set out on their next chapter, patience must be their virtue

Andrea Agnelli left a mixed legacy at Juventus. The first 6 ¹⁄₂ years or so of his decade-long tenure as the club’s president were heady times, leading to some of the greatest success that the club has ever seen. The last 3 ¹⁄_2, though, saw the team start slipping down the slope toward the mess that we’ve seen the last several years.

The hallmark of those down years was impatience.

The success of that first tenure was exciting. Along with their unprecedented title streak, the team came agonizingly close to Champions League glory twice in four years. It was here that Agnelli’s impatient streak began to manifest.

Rather than continue to follow Beppe Marotta’s long-term plan, Agnelli jumped at signing Cristiano Ronaldo, hoping it would be a shortcut to both on-field success and the growth of the club as a brand and driving Marotta, one of the world’s best sporting directors, into the hands of Inter process. Then he tried to move the team in a new direction tactically, but pulled the plug on successive coaches after only a single season apiece, only to backtrack and re-hire Massimiliano Allegri. One wonders if he would’ve been similarly trigger happy with Allegri had he not signed him to an absurd contract that made sacking him a financial impossibility until the end of the past season. Add to that his part in the half-cocked reveal of the Super League, which ripped Juve out of the leading role it played through him in UEFA and the ECA, and either his inability or unwillingness to reign in Fabio Paratici as his capital gains schemes began to go off the rails and put the club into even more trouble, and we’re left with the gigantic mess that is the current Juventus.

Now, new management is embarking on the rebuild that this club has desperately needed for several years. If it’s going to end the way we all want it to, the front office is going to have to exercise the patience that their predecessor so sorely lacked.

This new chapter has a lot of promise and potential. But to realize that potential, it’s going to take a lot of work. And work needs time.

Time was the thing that Maurizio Sarri and Andrea Pirlo were denied. Sarri was put in a situation that proved to untenable, expected to implement Sarrismo with a roster of players largely unsuited for the task, and never given more than one transfer window to get players that would fit. Pirlo proved more adaptive, and while the season was at time a struggle, in the last month or so of the season the team started looking like it was finding something. The season ended with an upward swing in form, punctuated by a win over perhaps Gian Piero Gasperini’s best Atalanta team to win the Coppa Italia. It would have been interesting to see what he might have been able to do with a normal summer — remember, he took over in the truncated offseason and transfer window of the summer of 2020 — and some more players of his choosing.

Both Sarri and Pirlo were starting projects, projects that were going to take more than a season to complete. But their boss’ desire for immediate results scuppered both of them, each time setting the team back to square one. They were, perhaps, victims of Juve’s own success. No one expected Antonio Conte’s first team to win a title. The club went from zero to dominant so fast, expectations started to outpace the reality that the team was ahead of schedule and still needed a bit more work in order to truly join the biggest table.

That can’t happen again. For Thiago Motta to be successful as Juventus manager, the team needs to be completely committed to realizing his vision. That means giving him the pieces he needs to make his football work, and the time to make it work.

Photo by Daniele Badolato - Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images

Cristiano Giuntoli is already doing his best for the first. This transfer window has been more active than the last few summers combined. The players who have come in, like Douglas Luiz, Kephren Thuram, and Michele Di Gregorio, are specifically geared toward the way Motta wants to play.

But there’s still work to be done, as reflected by the targets that have been missed — in particular Riccardo Calafiori, whose play at center-back was an important part of Bologna’s play last year, and, seemingly, Jean-Clair Todibo, who was the first alternate option for the position. Other targets like Teun Koopmeiners remain up in the air, and the team has little depth in the forward positions. Given the sheer tonnage of work left to do and the financial state of the club, it’s unlikely Motta will have a roster that truly conforms to what he wants in one transfer window.

That means we’re likely to see some awkward moments over the course of the 2024-25 season as Motta reconciles his philosophy with the players he has available. There could be some hiccups against teams they ought to beat, and some games against the league’s best could turn ugly.

It’s imperative not to overreact to those moments. Apart from the need for players, Motta’s system will simply need time to sink in to the players who are already at Continassa. Just look at the year-to-year change at Bologna: with largely the same players, he went from a ninth-place finish in 2022-23 to a top-five finish and a Champions League berth in ‘23-24.

Too often in the last half decade Juventus has been set back by hasty decisions. As the club embarks on one of its most important seasons in years, it’s essential that they don’t make the same mistake. There will be bumps as Giuntoli finishes the roster and Motta trains his players. The front office must ride those bumps out and give Motta the chance he needs to actually create a project. Time will not guarantee that the project will ultimately succeed—only the work of the coach and his players can do that. But without time, the chances of Motta and Juventus’ success drop dramatically.

There have been too many “projects” that have been snuffed out by impatience lately. That has to change just as much as the tactics and the roster if Juventus are to return to the top.