Juventus’ incredible defeat in Cagliari (78% ball possession and only one shot conceded) confirms that this is a championship in which pragmatism dominates. And attacks that are incapable of making a difference weigh heavily…
Cagliari beat Juventus by making just one shot on goal and leaving the ball to the opponent for almost the entire match: 78% overall Juventus ball possessioneven higher in the second half. Juventus who collected a paltry point against Cagliari and Lecce despite having finished towards the opponent’s target over forty times. Same fate as Como against Milan, Parma in the away match in Naples in the middle of the week and – with the roles reversed – Milan itself when they hit the wall of Genoa and Fiorentina.
It’s a championship in which pragmatism dominatesthe triumph of the old theory postulated by Jose Mourinho according to which football can be played, even well, leaving possession to the opponent to organize themselves in defense and start again. Once upon a time they called it catenaccio, now it is an art available to everyone including the big ones who sometimes know how to be a rock and sometimes a hammer.
It is completely clear that only some incompetent, perhaps in bad faith, can compare Milan’s victories in Como and Cagliari’s victory against Juventus. Allegri studied a functional match plan for the occasion, waiting for Fabregas’ aggression and then turning the front around when the opportunity arose. Pisacane, who in reality is a playmaker rather than a scorer, simply exploited the only ball that came into Juventus’ penalty area, relying on the saves of Caprile, the VAR, a post and focusing on the absence of a merciless finisher in Spalletti’s squad. Otherwise Cagliari would have blown up and that’s the end of the matter.
In any case there are some trends that cannot be ignored. Meanwhile, the constipation of Serie A attacks in a season in which goals arrive in dribs and drabs: it is not just a statistical observation but a context in which it can happen that you court the opponent’s area for the entire match without being able to finish. In short, there is a lack of those who break down the wall by force, which makes the Serie A season on the one hand boring and on the other exhilarating.
The product of this absence is that behind every game there is a trap and it is no coincidence (perhaps) that the team with the greatest quality ahead of it was the one who suffered least in the ascending phase. Chivu’s Inter did not lose points against enemies from the so-called right side of the table, with the exception of the home defeat against Udinese at the dawn of the championship. The others, starting from Milan at -11 in the provincial games up to the difficulties of Napoli, even at home, are sacrificing goals to this lack.
The short muzzle has nothing to do with it and neither does the supposed moral and aesthetic superiority of attacking always and anyway. In the end, football is a much simpler game than how it is designed and on the night in Cagliari, for example, Pisacane enjoyed his pragmatism while Spalletti was left with only pieces to try to rearrange.
