The former PSG midfielder has made his mark on the Juve bench. The margin for progress remains significant before the trip to Lille this Tuesday in the Champions League.
A breath of fresh air caressed the bucolic village of Vinovo, in the heart of the Piedmont region, where the Juventus training center is located. After so many years under the leadership of curator Massimiliano Allegri (2014-2019 then 2021-2024), the Bianconeri welcomed Thiago Motta, 42, on their bench this summer. Former midfielder, the Brazilian-Italian with 231 matches with Paris Saint-Germain is preparing to set foot in France again, more precisely in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, to face Lille in the Champions League, this Tuesday (9 p.m.) .
No one was surprised when, following his retirement from the field, Motta took the reins of PSG’s under-19s in the summer of 2018. As a player, he was the sentinel in front of the defense. A control tower that sees everything, that anticipates, that directs with its silky left paw. A guarantor of stability. A notion that he has not known since his reconversion, with five teams in six years. He only spent one season in Paris, failed at Genoa (10 matches before being fired), did not convince at Spezia and made his career take off at Bologna.
Motta has everything to do again at Juventus
When he presented himself in Turin, Motta announced that he wanted “please the fans”. This is what he did in Bologna in two seasons, lifting the soft-underbelly club to the top 5 in Serie A, qualifying it for the Champions League for the first time since 1965. With Juve, the promise was ambitious.
The native of São Bernardo do Campo (Brazil) and ex-Italian international (30 caps) landed at the biggest club in the country, with 36 league titles, and recent success: nine titles in a row between 2012 and 2020. But it was also the house of Allegri, an apostle of a defensive and minimalist style which earned him criticism for many years. And a devastated house with results in freefall for four years, punctuated by a points penalty in Serie A for accounting fraud and exclusion from European Cups for violations of UEFA rules.
Massimo Pinca / REUTERS
At Juve, Motta shaped a team in his image and close to that seen in Bologna: a desire to have the ball, to dominate, knowing how to be patient and playing physical, even to the limit of the rules if necessary. “We want to do a lot and sometimes we don’t manage to do what we want. We must maintain the balance”analyzed Motta after a draw against Parma on October 30 (2-2). There is a reason for satisfaction: Juve are the only undefeated team in Serie A. The problem? She had more draws (6) than victories (5).
Second youngest team in Serie A
Brick by brick, Motta is building his own building at the Old Lady with the second youngest workforce in Italy (25 years average age). He is not helped by injuries. Turin’s best defender, Bremer, suffered a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee in October. Midfielder Douglas Luiz, bought for €50 million, has been absent for four matches, winger Nico Gonzalez too and former Marseille striker Arkadiusz Milik had knee surgery a month ago.
Juve can count on its defensive base, certainly weakened without Bremer, and its Serbian center forward Dusan Vlahovic (8 goals in 14 matches). “We must improve collectively, show more solidarity. be more aggressive”demanded Motta. In the right car in Serie A (5th in the standings), the Bianconeri are also in the Champions League (6 pts in three matches), despite a final hiccup against Stuttgart (0-1). LOSC, on the contrary, remains on two prestigious victories, against Real Madrid (1-0) and Atlético (1-3). But Bruno Genesio is wary of his counterpart “who, already as a player, had a very very important tactical culture“. And which he will have to flaunt to foil the Mastiffs’ trap.
