Napoli 2-1 Juventus: 3 takeaways from the Bianconeri’s defeat in Naples

Juventus succumbed to yet another defeat in Serie A 2021/22, this time against fellow Scudetto aspirants in SSC Napoli. A 2-1 scoreline favouring the hosts meant the visitors left Naples at the end of the full-time empty-handed.

The result leaves the Bianconeri with just one point from three games, meaning Le Zebre sit in the bottom half of the table. Even if something drastic happens to other teams over the weekend, Juventus are likely to finish the third round of the new domestic campaign in the lower half of the table, signifying how bad their start to the new campaign has been thus far. It’s unprecedented.

As reported in our preview, Juventus were without the South American stars going into the mega clash against Napoli this weekend due to the extended international spell imposed by CONMEBOL. Given the unavailability of stars such as Alex Sandro, Juan Cuadrado, and Rodrigo Bentancur, Allegri was propelled to hand Luca Pellegrini his first Serie A start in black and white colours.

On the other hand, Mattia De Sciglio, who — according to Pavel Nedvěd — is the future of Juventus, and Dejan Kulusevski also started their first game for the visiting side this season in Serie A. Benefitting from a blunder committed by Kostas Manolas, Alvaro Morata opened the scoreline at the 10th minute of the game.

Napoli started showing their true colours after the first half whistle, with Matteo Politano scoring the equaliser around 57 minutes and Kalidou Koulibaly sealing the game for I Partenopei with a simple tap-in in the 85th minute of the game. Here are the three key takeaways from the Turin-based club’s fruitless visit to Naples.

[Please note that this is a slideshow, which means you will have to press on the “next” button visible down the first page or at the top-right of the page to access the next slide.]

3. Juventus got outclassed in every department

A team wins a game when the players representing the respective team dominate in each department. Sometimes if fortune favours, that notion could be contradictory. But still, how could a team — dreaming of winning the domestic title this season — get outclassed in all departments? Juventus say, “hello!”

Now we dive into statistics taken from Whoscored.com. In the game won 2-1 by Napoli, the hosts enjoyed 67.2% of total possession, while the visiting party, Juventus unfortunately, were able to obtain only 32.8% of possession. In terms of shots and shots on target, Gli Azzurri had six on target from 25 shots attempted, with Juve registering four on goal from eight attempts.

The passing numbers also hinted at how inferior Juventus were on Saturday. The Bianconeri were only able to put 312 passes together with a collective accuracy of 81%, while Napoli completed 627 passes (almost twice of what Juventus were able to string) with 91% of them being perfect throughout the game.

The department where the Old Lady ultimately excelled is in the sphere of committing fouls. The visitors managed to rack up 16 fouls to the Napoli’s 14. So that’s not a performance Massimiliano Allegri or any Juventus player could brag about.

There certainly is a huge gap between where Juventus currently are and where they want to be. Some may end the note by saying that it is just the beginning. On the contrary, it is always the beginning that sets the tone for the rest of the voyage.