Saturday night was Juventus\u2019 first visit to the Arena Garibaldi in nearly 12,800 days. In case you\u2019re not able to do the quick math in your head \u2014 and who could blame you with that kind of number \u2014 that\u2019s nearly 35 years, with a mid-January visit to Pisa in 1991 being the last time that the Bianconeri strolled into the quality atmosphere that this venue in Tuscany has to offer.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s safe to say that this performance will not go into the vault of all-time Juventus\u2019 team showings. Or really anything close to it. For much of Saturday night\u2019s 2-0 win over newly-promoted and 19th-place Pisa, it was a complete slog against an opponent who packed numbers and back defended with numbers very well. But for what this team needs more than just about anything \u2014 hint: it\u2019s points \u2014 they eventually got the job done, and that is what Juve eventually secured when Kenan Yildiz\u2019s seventh goal of the season in all competitions took much of the stress off a slim one-goal lead and saw Juventus jump into third place, albeit with those around them set to play on Sunday or Monday and also with at least one game in hand.<\/p>\n
An overall not-great performance by Juventus still ended with these things being true:<\/p>\n
I mean, let\u2019s face it, it really could be a lot worse. Mainly because it was before Luciano Spalletti showed up in Turin.<\/p>\n
Saturday night was not Spalletti\u2019s best showing. Just as it wasn\u2019t for Juventus. This was a slog, with the kind of first half that saw Juventus dominate for much of the opening 45 minutes only for Pisa to have two of the best scoring chances, including one shot that went off the woodwork. It wasn\u2019t looking great. They had just six shots total. They had two just shots on goal and their xG was nothing to really boast about whatsoever. The lineup decisions that Spalletti made \u2014 namely Lo\u00efs Openda and Teun Koopmeiners \u2014 were not looking effective at all, and it\u2019s not like there were a lot of positives coming out of such a sluggish first half to begin with.<\/p>\n
But what Spalletti has done well since coming to Turin is to try and reverse course and make second-half adjustments as soon as he can. The introduction of Edon Zhegrova certainly helped, as evident as by what he did before, during and after the opening goal that we thought was originally scored by Pierre Kalulu but ultimately went down as an own goal. It was a change like Zhegrova that Juve desperately needed for some sort of presence and creativity spark on the right wing \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly what happened almost immediately after he came on.<\/p>\n
And yet, it was still a slog.<\/p>\n
This wasn\u2019t the kind of performance that we saw against Roma. Nor was it really expected to be knowing that Pisa have given some top teams a tough time already this season and just the simple way of how they play compared to Juve\u2019s opponent last weekend. Pisa forced Juve to try and break them down \u2014 which proved to be a pretty difficult task for a good amount of the 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the own goal and then Yildiz\u2019s icing on the cake ensured Juve will go into the new year on a nice little run of results and, at the very least, be within striking distance of the top four when they kick off their first game of 2026.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s more than we can say about what was happening when Spalletti first showed up. All progress isn\u2019t linear, but the team keeps winning no matter if it\u2019s in Serie A or in Europe \u2014 and that is what matters most around these parts.<\/p>\n
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday night was Juventus\u2019 first visit to the Arena Garibaldi in nearly 12,800 days. In case you\u2019re not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,55755,55756,55757,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-373061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-post-game-threads","11":"tag-previews-reviews","12":"tag-serie-a-campionato-2025-26","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}