Was Fabio Paratici still in denial on Monday night? Before Juventus kicked off away to Fiorentina on Sunday, their chief football officer insisted nobody at the club was even considering the possibility that they might finish outside the top four. By the time this latest round of Serie A games had finished, his team was locked in a three-way tie for third.
One of the teams alongside them was Milan. Between the two, it is hard to know which might feel more dread at the prospect of missing out on the Champions League. As winners of the past nine Serie A titles, Juventus have higher expectations. Yet the Rossoneri led the league through the first 20 weeks of this campaign.
They were the winter champions that nobody would have predicted, with the youngest starting XI in Serie A despite fielding the 39-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic up front. He stole the headlines but their success was founded as much on the midfield swagger of Ismaël Bennacer and Franck Kessie, the audacity of Theo Hernández and Hakan Calhanoglu, the selflessness of Davide Calabria.
Their charge to the top had begun last season. Milan went unbeaten in Serie A for almost a full calendar year: 304 days from March 2020 to January 2021. Through it all, their manager, Stefano Pioli, fought to keep his young team grounded. Even as Milan led the table, he continued to insist that their objective was simply to get back into the Champions League after eight seasons away. To many, his caution seemed excessive. Perhaps he simply recognised the brittle nature of youthful confidence. Milan lasted 27 games without a defeat in Serie A but since that run ended, they have played 17 more times without ever winning more than two in a row.
In the biggest matches, they have crumbled – conceding three in defeats by Juventus, Atalanta and Inter. The story repeated against Lazio on Monday.
It took little more than a minute for Joaquín Correa to open the scoring, exchanging a one-two with Ciro Immobile and rounding Gianluigi Donnarumma to walk the ball into the net. It would not be the last time he left Milan’s defenders in his wake. The first half played out as a relentless back-and-forth between two teams committed to the vertical ball. Calhanoglu had already drawn a save from Pepe Reina before Correa’s opener and soon tested the keeper again from close range. Lazio, though, always looked the more dangerous. Manuel Lazzarri had a goal chalked off for a marginal offside.
Correa’s second goal, just after the break, ought to have been disallowed, but the referee Daniele Orsato was oddly unmoved by VAR footage showing how Lucas Leiva trod on Calhanoglu’s foot to win possession at the start of the attack. Lazio’s second-half superiority, in any case, was manifest. Immobile sent a chip against the post from 25 yards, before drilling a gorgeous finish into the bottom corner from only a little closer in.
There’s no stopping Ciro Immobile this time! 🔥
A fantastic win secured for Lazio and a big blow to Milan’s own bid for Champions League football 👀 pic.twitter.com/NCrs4yUtgy
— Premier Sports 📺 (@PremierSportsTV) April 26, 2021
How did this Milan team come to look out of its depth on nights like this? Ibrahimovic was absent due to injury – as he had been for the defeat by Sassuolo in midweek – but that hardly explains why the Rossoneri have been unable to keep a clean sheet in seven games, their longest such run under Pioli. Former certainties have evaporated. Bennacer, whose season has been wrecked by injuries, gifted possession to Lazio for the opening goal. Hernández’s overcommitment was repeatedly exposed. Even Fikayo Tomori, whose mid-season emergence to claim a starting spot drew cries for a fresh England call-up, has made high-profile mistakes. Correa made him look heavy-legged with a series of feints leading up to the second goal.
Lazio, it should be said, were brilliant: the quality of their collective performance all the more impressive when you consider that their manager, Simone Inzaghi, only made it back to the training ground on Saturday after 18 days at home with Covid-19. The practical challenges of managing a team via webinar are one thing, but there were scary moments personally too, as his wife, Gaia, was hospitalised for several days.
The Biancocelesti have won five of their past six matches and aspire to a Champions League return themselves. Inter’s Scudetto is assured, but behind them, five teams will contest the remaining three places. Atalanta are in pole position, second in the table on 68 points. Milan, Juventus and Napoli are level on 66. Lazio have 61, but with a game in hand.
Juventus, like Milan, are enduring a crisis of form. Paratici’s defiant confidence was not matched by the team on Sunday, as they drew 1-1 with Fiorentina – falling behind to opponents who sit 14th, before equalising with their only shot on target. Andrea Pirlo’s team once again looked a muddle, with nobody pushing on from midfield and the team’s notional centre-forward, Paulo Dybala, crowding things up further with his insistence on dropping deep. Cristiano Ronaldo cut a sullen figure once more on the left of attack.
Quick Guide
Serie A results
Genoa 2-0 Spezia, Parma 3-4 Crotone, Sassuolo 1-0 Sampdoria, Benevento 2-4 Udinese, Fiorentina 1-1 Juventus, Inter 1-0 Verona, Cagliari 3-2 Roma, Atalanta 5-0 Bologna, Lazio 3-0 Milan, Torino 0-2 Napoli.
Paratici has repeatedly stated that Juventus intend to stick with Pirlo, while Andrea Agnelli has insisted he has no regrets over the appointment, but for the first time the manager himself sounded like he might be close to throwing in the towel. “I don’t think I have done this work as I wanted to, or as everyone wanted me to,” said Pirlo. “You try to get better every match, but from our initial prospects I am not happy, and I don’t think the club is happy.”
It has been a grim week for Juventus, for whom the collapse of the Super League project has been paralleled by a collapse in the standings. They did beat hapless Parma in midweek, but a defeat by Atalanta before that means that the Bergamo club have not only moved ahead, but also hold the tie-breaker should they finish level on points at the end of the campaign.
To miss out on the Champions League would be hugely damaging. As the football finance blogger Swiss Ramble notes in this excellent thread, Juventus and Milan were the two Super League clubs with the greatest operating losses last season if you exclude player sales. They have arguably the toughest run-ins of the teams vying for the top four, including a game against each other.
It remains to be seen whether Ronaldo will be happy to see out the final year of his contract under any scenario, but certainly it is hard to imagine him staying, at 36, to play in the Europa League. When Paratici was asked about the player’s future last month, he dismissed it as ridiculous, saying: “I could never have imagined putting Cristiano Ronaldo up for discussion.”
The football news cycle, though, is moving faster than ever. It was only yesterday that the thought of Juventus missing out on the Champions League seemed impossible as well.