Malmo FF 0-3 Juventus: 3 key takeaways from Juve’s first UCL night

3. Pressing could’ve been better

Nothing is perfect — surely not in football. One thing — or vulnerability, as you can say — in Allegri’s plan that has caught the eyes of many since the beginning of his returning regime at Juventus is the lack of intensity shown by players while pressing an opponent or how dysfunctional and discrete their pressing has been thus far.

On Tuesday night, the overall notion was the same. Juventus, under Allegri, have never been the team that prefers pressing from the front. Forming up in the 4-4-2 structure last night, the frontmen in Alvaro Morata and Paulo Dybala looked unenthusiastic while closing down an opposing defender. While the Spaniard was trying to lead a well-orchestrated press, Dybala seemed lukewarm in his attempt to win the ball back.

For the first few minutes hence, Malmo totally dominated the possession and created quite a few openings. Only their end product to test the goalkeeper didn’t come.

After the first phase of pressing by the forwards, it was Locatelli’s turn to roam and run the press. Due to his nonchalant dynamism, he did succeed in that to some extent.

However, if we gauge their formula of pressing from a broader point of view, it looked dysfunctional and individual-based rather than being an embodiment of the collective effort from the players.

Therefore, there lies a huge room in the pressing department which Juventus could improve in future. Though, it was quite an authoritative performance to garner their first competitive win of the campaign.