Unlike Cardinale, who eliminated Milan after failing to qualify for the Champions League, Exor’s number one is trying to bring Comolli and Spalletti together. At least until proven otherwise…
On the one hand, the tsunami of Gerry Cardinale, Milan eliminated a few hours after the failure of the season and a management line to be built from scratch and also quite quickly. On the other hand, the apparent calm of Juventus, where nothing changes even if everything could change. Outside of Europe which also counts the Bianconeri, with dynamics and relationships to mend or knots to untie and an ownership that has seen the certainties built in recent months crumble day after day. And who is choosing a path opposite to that of Milan, at least for the moment.
John Elkann he didn’t take Juventus head-on as his AC Milan colleague did instead. The news tells of an ongoing attempt to reconcile the different souls of the company: on the one hand the management personified by Damien Comollicalled to Continassa a year ago, appointed CEO in November and now in the crosshairs for the disasters of two onerous and wrong markets, and on the other Luciano Spalletti which would like to be the center of gravity of the next project.
Irreconcilable needs if the starting point remains that of two factions that do not communicate, one convinced that the other must take a step back. In the middle is the ownership that has been throwing money into the club’s jammed mechanism for seven years, capital increases that have burned over a billion euros, and which would need to avoid starting yet another Year Zero of the post-Andrea Agnelli era. While waiting to understand if and how Elkann will untie the knot, busy as he is with other events starting from the presentation of the new electric Ferrari which marks a discontinuity in the history of the Cavallino, the Juventus world is watching the positioning games.
Comolli’s faults (and the reasons he can present)
The problem is that they are all right despite all having a part of the wrong and a share, perhaps not symmetrical, of responsibility for what happened in the last season. Comolli can rightly claim to have been hired by Elkann himself with the onerous task of redesigning the entire Juventus company and that we have worked on this and have now arrived at a structure that should begin to function. Therefore, it would make no sense not to test it.
But Comolli himself is wrong for having presented himself very badly to the Juventus world, with the presumption of someone who believes he can teach how to do things to an ecosystem he doesn’t know, with human relationships (it is said) that are not built and with two disastrous transfer sessions: Openda, David, Zeghrovathe unconvinced confirmation of Tudorthe wavering attitude in the matter of the renewal of Vlahovic and not having given Spalletti the striker he asked for in the winter. Heavy charges, circumstances that have eroded his legacy of credibility inside and outside Juventus.
Spalletti and the signature on the failure in the championship
And Spalletti? He rightly remembers having jumped on the Juventus bandwagon, having coached a team built by and for others and physiologically asks to be able to count more in future choices. The issue, however, is how much his opinion should weigh on a market in which technical and economic needs will necessarily have to be balanced, as failure to qualify for the Champions League has created a ‘hole’ of several tens of millions of euros.
Here we get to the crux of coexistence because the coach has been on the bench since the beginning of November and has not managed to go beyond sixth place in the championship (54 points in 29 days) and in Europe he did so-so until his ouster in the playoffs at the hands of Galatasaray, conceding five goals in Türkiye. Translated: he cannot be the white knight who comes to save everyone, but starting from him – a contract signed in April when qualification seemed in his pocket – should also go through a healthy self-criticism of his own mistakes.
Elkann is in the middle of the ford. He seems to have chosen the path of mediation between souls despite knowing the risks he is taking because without clarity and collaboration Juventus will face stormy seas in the coming months. Football is simple in its linearity: club projects work that have a clear line of command and a shared basis that runs through the club at all levels up to the sports area. The locker room can also argue, the upper and middle floors cannot. Who is right between Cardinale and Elkann?
