DBasia.news – Juventus’ start at the start of 2022 has not been ideal. Hosting this season’s Scudetto hunter team, Napoli, at the Allianz Stadium in the continuation of the Serie A match, Juventus failed to win and drew 1-1.
Juventus was even left behind first from Dries Mertens’ goal before equalizing from Federico Chiesa. This has shown Il Bianconeri’s weakness this season: difficulty in scoring goals.
Juventus was not only inconsistent in Massimiliano Allegri’s second term in charge, plus Cristiano Ronaldo left, but also struggled to score goals. They only scored 28 goals from 20 matches and in the top 9 it was the smallest record.
Against Napoli, Juventus had an expected goal (xG) of 1.3, 0.6 more than their opponent, but the opponent was still able to obtain 1 point. Contrary to the number of goals, Juventus’ defense is strong.
The team from Turin conceded only 18 goals. Although strong, strong defense alone is not enough in the struggle for the Champions League zone. The decline in their goal tally was largely due to Ronaldo leaving and no replacement.
Alvaro Morata, who has scored five goals, Paulo Dybala and Moise Kean played sloppy and didn’t score. Morata is targeted by Barcelona and Allegri has made it clear that he will not let him go.
No doubt they were linked with several strikers from Mauro Icardi (PSG), Arkadiusz Milik (Olympique Marseille), Gianluca Scamacca (Sassuolo), Dusan Vlahovic (Fiorentina), to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Arsenal).
Their difficulty in scoring goals was also seen by former Juventus midfielder, Sami Khedira.
“Two or three years ago Juve changed their idea a little bit about football and the players, they made mistakes but now they are trying to recover. They haven’t played badly but they haven’t scored many goals and this is a big problem,” Khedira said.
“They lost Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored a lot of goals for the team. There is a completely new squad, with young players, without much experience, there is a lack of balance, I don’t think there are any leaders, except for Chiellini and Bonucci, but in midfield none.”
“They played a good game against Napoli, it’s not a question of quality but of personality, and I hope they can fix that.”