Juventus fired Thiago Motta for being himself

With 9 games remaining in the Serie A season and Juventus sitting in 5th place, the Bianconeri have parted ways with manager Thiago Motta.

They currently sit one point behind Bologna, the team they hired Motta away from, with a +17 goal differential to Bologna’s +15. Last season, Bologna finished 5th with a +22 goal differential. So basically, Juventus hired the Bologna manager and then became Bologna. This can’t be called a particularly surprising outcome, but it certainly is a disappointing one given Juve’s budget.

In hiring Motta, the Juventus directors hypothesized that his possession-as-defense taken to new extremes coaching philosophy would work even better if he had some high-end talent to work with. Instead, Motta took the Bianconeri’s expensive players and turned them into… well, Bologna players.

It was clear from the start of Motta’s tenure that his football was going to be dull and that his team would struggle to create scoring chances. In recent weeks, the defense stopped keeping clean sheets, and the Juve board decided they could no longer tolerate watching this team.

Motta will probably claim — and perhaps truly believe in his heart — that things would have been different if star center back Bremer never tore his ACL. It’s probably true that Motta have seen out the season and finished top 4 with the Brazilian center back in the lineup, as you’ll see in the defensive trendline. But his attack has always sucked, and was always going to suck.

The downfall

Motta got everything he wanted from upper management and the recruitment department. Nico González, Francisco Conceição and Teun Koopmeiners were signed to fit his system. He was allowed to bench Dušan Vlahović and bring in Randal Kolo Muani on loan.

While the attack looked like it might be improving during the middle part of the season, it’s recently fallen back to summer-level production. Meanwhile, Juve’s average xG conceded has been steadily rising since the Bremer injury.

While there’s certainly no shame in losing to a team as good as Atalanta, you’d like to avoid getting absolutely pummelled at home. The writing was on the wall for Motta after this 4-0 defeat.

The following match, and the one that finally sealed Motta’s fate, was a bit different. Juventus didn’t concede a lot of shots, and created more than their opponents. But some bits of clinical finishing from Fiorentina and some poor shooting from Juve led to this rather silly result.

You may be tempted to call this unlucky. And sure, perhaps this one, individual game is. But on the whole, football teams can make their own luck by putting opponents under pressure by offering a consistent attacking threat. Motta’s Juventus simply didn’t do that.

Thiago Motta is what he is

I kind of spoiled this section up top, but it’s pretty funny how much Motta was the exact same coach at Juventus as Bologna, and the Bianconeri got exactly what they paid for. His Juve actually had slightly more xG and shot volume, but very similar attacking struggles.

And in the aggregate, they were similarly great defensively. This year’s Juventus have slightly more xG conceded per 90 than last year’s Bologna, but their percentile rank is actually higher compared to league trends. Juve’s PPDA is lower and distance from goal that they take defensive actions are higher, so he did make some use of the talent by pressing slightly more aggressively, but these are essentially the same team.

If you have the ball a lot and don’t take very many risks, you will have a low number of scoring chances and so will your opponent. Having elite vs. league average talent is not going to change much about this equation.

Not Stonks, line go down

And here’s what Motta’s system did to the stats of said talent. Basically every player on Juventus is worth less in the market than they were last summer.

Whatever you think of Dušan Vlahović, Juventus have over €100m in fees and wages invested in him, and would really like to either get solid production out of him or pump his value to make him sellable. He is probably the worst striker in any decent professional league on earth by StatsBomb’s OBV. Some of this is on him; his decision-making is often poor. But he’s also a striker with a very good physical profile and 86 Serie A goals, so it’s fair to assume a better coach could get something out of him.

But hey, Motta didn’t ask for Vlahović. He was stuck with the Serbian striker. What about the players he did approve the signings of? Well, he made all of them worse. Playmaking and goal-scoring dynamo Teun Koopmeiners (€55m) is just a ball winner now.

Nico González (€33m) is the exact same dude except he’s getting half the shot volume and xG that he did at Fiorentina.

And Khéphren Thuram (€20m) is pretty much the exact same guy as he was at Nice, except now instead of providing mid playmaking value, he provides absolutely no playmaking value.

This is the greatest sin of Thiago Motta. Juventus are a club that aspires to win Champions League on a budget much smaller than English clubs, Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG and Bayern Munich. They can’t write off huge losses. They can’t have player values fall off a cliff.

Juve will now likely start searching for a manager who can make use of the attacking midfielders and wingers they spent so much money on. In the meantime, maybe interim manager Igor Tudor can inspire a push for 4th place by just letting these stifled players have a bit of fun.

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