Juventus: An Andrea Pirlo positive that cannot be overlooked

As a first-time manager leading the way for Italy’s most pressurized club, Andrea Pirlo has unsurprisingly been a target of criticism as Juventus have slumped in Serie A and been bounced out early in the Champions League again. But a lot of the criticisms are missing the forest for the trees, as they fail to dig beneath the surface of the results to find the traits that should make Juventini confident in Pirlo as the long-term leader of this “project”.

Pirlo’s Juve may have been eliminated from the Champions League on Tuesday, but even in that performance, the manager showed a crucial positive. For a third straight match, Juve bounced back from a poor first half to shine in the second half, and while they ended up being eliminated from a 3-2 win, the point remains that Juve bounced back for a third straight game after a slow start.

Let’s go all the way back to the Spezia game last week. Juventus did not score once in the first half against one of Serie A’s lower-table sides. But after Federico Bernardeschi and Alvaro Morata came in, Juve dominated en route to a 3-0 victory.

Their start against Lazio that following weekend was an even bigger disaster. But after an excellent goal from Adrien Rabiot tied things up, Juve cruised in the second half and pretty much wiped Lazio off the pitch. Ciro Immobile and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic are two of the best players in Serie A, but neither of them could even threaten the Bianconeri.

Andrea Pirlo is able to make adjustments at the half to help Juventus rapidly improve during the match

Then, Porto. Again, Juventus fell short in the end, but that’s not on Pirlo. They overcame another first-half deficit at 1-0 to score two goals to potentially save the tie. Only a botched wall on a Sergio Oliveira free kick could doom Juventus, and they still showed heart by getting an immediate response at the other end to still keep their hopes alive until the final whistle.

I don’t want to sugarcoat what we saw against Porto. It was not good enough. But Pirlo cannot be blamed for two ghastly individual errors in Merih Demiral’s poor discipline and the Cristiano Ronaldo and Wojciech Szczesny mistakes on the free kick. What manager can account for those errors?

The reality is that, like against Spezia and Lazio, Pirlo had his team firing on all cylinders in the second half after a dreadful opening 45. That means Pirlo is capable of adjusting and of motivating his players, who then show more fight for him in the second half.

Pirlo’s ability to get the most out of his team after half-time is very important, and there are not many young managers who can have this kind of an impact, especially at a club like Juventus where players may be more set in their ways. The former regista can relate to his players and make tactical changes in the middle of the match to help his team stay in the fight. We should make sure to point this out and praise Pirlo accordingly.