Juventus’ trip to Galatasaray for the first leg of the UEFA Champions League’s knockout phase playoffs had all the makings of an entertaining affair, even if the focus was solely on the Italian side. Things have trended upward for Juventus since they hired Luciano Spalletti last fall – they remain in the midst of a top four battle in Serie A thanks to a rebooted attack defined by the new coach’s unique tactical fixes, which included a start for U.S. international Weston McKennie as a central striker. It was all going according to plan for the most part in Istanbul as Juventus took a 2-1 lead into the halftime break, Teun Koopmeiners the unlikely scorer of a brace to get his side off to a strong start.
Then it all unraveled.
Noa Lang scored in the 49th minute and Davinson Sanchez restored Galatasaray’s lead 60 minutes in, though those goals were merely the latest contributions to an entertaining match rather than a signal that the scales were genuinely about to tip in the other direction. The hosts only waited a few more minutes for their eventual reprieve in Juan Cabal’s second yellow card just seven minutes later, marking a quick exit for the halftime substitute.
From there, any semblance of Juventus’ stability faded and floodgates well and truly opened for Galatasaray. They were off to the races and scored two more to close out the match, first with Lang completing a brace in the 75th minute and Sacha Boey capping things off with a goal of his own in the 86th minute. The hosts had no issue carving up Juventus’ defense but quite frankly, they had already been in the habit – the visitors’ back line had not covered itself in glory before Canal’s red card, digging themselves into a hole long before they were down a player.
Juventus’ mess was a rarity in their own history, only conceding five-plus goals in a European knockout game once before during a match against Austria’s Wiener SC during the 1958-59 season. It was a mess of their own creation, though – though Spalletti’s Juventus have improved considerably from an attacking standpoint, they have been vulnerable defensively the whole time. They have held their own in Italy but over the course of their Champions League campaign, Juventus have been average in that department – they conceded 10 goals in eight league phase matches from 11.64 expected goals against, ranking 16th in the Champions League in the latter category. They may have closed out the league phase with three clean sheets but they had the fortune of playing against Pafos, Benfica and Monaco, none of which ranked higher than 23rd in the league phase for goals scored. Galatasaray, then, were poised to take full advantage – Victor Osimhen may not have gotten on the scoresheet but several others did, the Turkish club now halfway to their deepest Champions League run since the 2013-14 season.
Spalletti’s tactical innovations in attack have been beyond helpful to Juventus – they averaged 1.5 goals scored from 1.4 expected goals across all competitions before he was hired, the numbers up to 1.8 and 1.9 in the respective categories since his arrival. It is a noticeable uptick for a team that does not exactly boast of the game’s top attackers and a real signal of Spalletti’s ability to get the best out players who have otherwise flown under the radar. A brace from Koopmeiners came as a pleasant surprise for Juventus at the start of the game while McKennie, who assisted the second goal, is a prime example of Spalletti’s impact. The U.S. men’s national team player has long been a utility player for the team but has transitioned into one of Juventus’ most impactful players – he has seven goals and five assists across all competitions this season, making it a career-best goalscoring campaign with months left on the clock.
An attack punching above their weight, though, is only so much cover for a defense as vulnerable as this one. By the time Cabal was sent off, Galatasaray were already in charge of the game, generating 2.28 expected goals from 17 shots while Juventus had 1.11 expected goals from seven total attempts. The work only got easier after the fact – the visitors did not take a single shot after being reduced to 10 men, sloppy play at the back allowing Galatasaray to score twice despite mustering just 0.64 expected goals.
Simply put, Juventus were not built to succeed in a tie like this one, even if the scale of the loss was hard to predict. It made them uniquely vulnerable in a tie against a team like Galatasaray and is par for the course for one of Italy’s former giants – since finishing as the runners-up in the Champions League in the 2016-17 season, they have only reached the quarterfinals twice and not once since the 2018-19 campaign. Juventus have also not been in the round of 16 since the 2021-22 season and may miss out for a fifth successive year at this rate. Tuesday’s result in Istanbul, if anything, may just be the official death knell on Juventus’ glory days, which may be long behind them at this point.
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