Did Juventus make a mistake replacing Andrea Pirlo? (Opinion) | OneFootball

Juventus parted ways with Andrea Pirlo after just one season at the helm, bringing in Max Allegri as the new coach, but on paper our season has been worse.

The facts state that the Old Lady picked up eight points less from their 38 Serie A outings this term, whilst finishing fourth in both campaigns, while the Pirlo could also boast having led his side to win both the Supercoppa Italiana and the Coppa Italia, whilst Allegri saw his side defeated by Inter Milan in both finals.

On the whole, you could easily claim that Pirlo enjoyed more success in his one season in charge, and I can’t help but believe that our younger and more inexperienced coach also had much more issues to contend with throughout the campaign also.

During the 2020-21 season we had to deal with playing without a pre-season thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, whilst also having almost continuous personnel issues due to to positive outbreaks amongst the playing squads, matches having to be postponed last minute due to excessive positives in their squads, and with key player Paulo Dybala missing almost the entire season for a number of reasons.

This season hasn’t been without bumps in the road, with Federico Chiesa being a huge absentee for over half of our season, while Cristiano Ronaldo requesting to leave just as the season was due to begin left us with little time to source a suitable replacement, and the arrivals of both Dusan Vlahovic and Denis Zakaria did boost our form.

Watching our side closely during both campaigns, there has been a lack of balance throughout the team during both campaigns, and I may be a little distracted by the negative nature of Max Allegri’s playing style, but I can’t help but feel that we were better last season.

Many times we failed to win under Pirlo despite being the clear protagonist on the field, and was excited to watch us perform. This term we may have seemed more consistent, but as our points tally shows, and the fact that we lost twice more in the league than we did last year, tells you that we were not.

Did we pull the cord too quickly in letting go of Pirlo?

Patrick