When Juvntus started the campaign with an average squad coached by Igor Tudor, the expectations were fairly low from the outset.
Nevertheless, most fans and observers still expected the team to achieve the bare minimum by securing qualification to the Champions League – After all, this has been the trend in recent years.
But for the first time since Luigi Delneri’s tenure, Juventus have failed to finish in the Top four, without counting the 2022/23 campaign, when the club was slapped with a point deduction.
With the 2025/26 campaign now in the rearview mirror, it’s time to identify the reasons behind this unmitigated failure.
By the end of the 2024/25 campaign, Juventus tried to lure Antonio Conte back to the club, but Aurelio De Laurentiis convinced him to stay at Napoli for another year. In the meantime, Roma had made progress in their talks with Gian Piero Gasperini.
In the absence of an available (and affordable) top candidate, and with the Club World Cup forcing the club to act, Damien Comolli decided to confirm Igor Tudor, banking on the momentum he had gained after securing UCL football.
Nevertheless, the Juventus CEO was forced to make a U-turn just two months into the campaign following a horrific start to the season that saw the team put together an eight-man winless run.
Luciano Spalletti’s arrival proved to be a shrewd decision, but the team was already playing catch-up.
The 2025 summer transfer campaign was a colossal disaster, and there is simply no way around it. Comolli recruited four new players: Jonathan David, Joao Mario, Lois Openda, and Edon Zhegrova, and not one of them proved genuinely useful for the cause.
Compared with the summer, the January transfer window was certainly an improvement with Jeremie Boga and Emil Holm coming in.
However, Spalletti had asked for a centre-forward to replace Dusan Vlahovic, who still had three more months on the sidelines, and he never got one.
The lack of a true striker forced the manager to rely on the unconvincing David and Openda. Thus, one might wonder how many points the team dropped because of the absence of a prolific target man.
While singling out one player might be harsh, Michele Di Gregorio’s untimely blunders have been very costly. The 28-year-old conceded avoidable goals, often from the first shot on target.
Spalletti relegated him to the bench in recent months, but Mattia Perin’s injury gave him another chance, one he failed to make the most of.
Whatever happened to the Monza goalkeeper who was named the Serie A Goalkeeper of the Year in 2024?!
The unsavoury Kalulu-Bastoni incident might be the most infamous incident, but there were many other refereeing episodes that impeded Juventus before and after the Derby d’Italia in February, including the matches against Hellas Verona and Lazio.
They often say that the refereeing errors eventually balance themselves out, but it didn’t happen this time.
In his final press conference of the season, Spalletti summed it up by saying that his squad lacks the required character.
This largely explains why the team suffocated under pressure, especially in the penultimate round of the season against Fiorentina.
Despite their limited technical qualities, a mentally stronger team would have maintained composure and preserved its advantage in the Champions League race. Alas, genuine leaders have become increasingly scarce at Continassa.
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