Juventus have had a bad 2022, with allegations of financial misconduct, an early exit from the Champions League and the European Super League floundering.
There are no good times to bury bad news if the bad news is bad enough. Juventus capped off a miserable 2022 with the resignation of the club’s entire board of directors at the end of November, the latest in a steady fine rain of of bad news which has quietly soaked the club since the middle of March.
And with several of their players having had a good World Cup, the question is not whether Juventus can continue their recent trajectory towards some sort of form, but whether they may even need to sell some of these assets – whose values may have risen quite suddenly – to balance the books again.
The beginning of the descent of Juventus over the course of 2022 started in March with their sudden – and fairly unexpected – elimination from the Champions League at the hands of Villarreal. Last season had not started well for them; they were bottom of the table after three matches with just a single point, before an initially slightly faltering return to form saw them lift themselves up to fourth place in the Serie A.
But while there were reasons to believe that Juventus had weaknesses, they’d been unbeaten in Serie A since the end of November going into their return leg against the eventual semi-finalists. They’d sailed through their group stage with five wins out of six. It wasn’t the levels that the club had been reaching a few years ago, but it was a definite improvement on their start.
And the first leg ended in a decent result in the last season before UEFA abolished away goals, a 1-1 draw which gave them a reasonable advantage to take back for the second leg in Turin. But when it hit, it was like a tsunami. Three Villarreal goals in 14 minutes didn’t just knock the wind out of their sails, it knocked the club so badly off-kilter that it becomes difficult to believe that many of their current issues could have stemmed from this moment.
After returning to Serie A with a win against Salernitana, they lost at home to Inter the following week and went on to win just three of their last eight games. Fourth place and another season of Champions League football was ensured. This was deemed a reasonable return on the first season back for head coach Massimiliano Allegri, who’d returned to the club the previous May following the sacking of Andrea Pirlo, who had just failed to win their…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Football365…