Sports
It might get worse for Juventus before it gets better as club moves on from Tudor
On Monday, following a 1-0 away defeat to Lazio this weekend, Juventus sacked manager Igor Tudor. Reportedly, there’s no replacement immediately lined up — they’re considering both former Italy boss Luciano Spalletti and Raffaele Palladino, who took Fiorentina to sixth place last season. Whoever takes over will become the sixth permanent manager in the past six years.
Juventus represent a case study in what not to do, but also serve as a reminder that poor decisions in the recent past impact the present and the future, narrowing the ability of replacements to make optimal choices. Their next managerial move will determine if they descend further down their spiral, or if they finally start to rid their system of the poisons built up over the years.
Tudor paid the price not just for his own mistakes, but also those made by the guys who came before him. Not just coaches either, everyone from sporting directors to chief executives is, to varying degrees, responsible. As, of course, are many of the players.
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Tudor took over as an interim boss in March of last year, replacing Thiago Motta. (The latter was a horrendous choice who stuck around too long.) They were one point out of the Champions League places in Serie A and his brief was to steer them into the top four, which he did (by a point).
In the meantime, the club were going to figure out what to do for 2025-26 — except there was nobody to do the “figuring out” because Cristiano Giuntoli, the chief decision-maker, was already on his way out of the club less than two years into a five-year contract. His replacement, Damien Comolli, took over on June 1, and with the Club World Cup around the corner, he opted to stick with Tudor for the following season as well.
The thinking in retaining Tudor was that there just wasn’t enough time — five or six weeks — to identify a long-term coach ahead of the 2025-26 season, and they didn’t want to rush into a commitment. Hindsight is 20/20, but obviously that was the wrong decision because now it’s nearly Halloween and they have five or six days (not weeks) to find somebody.
Comolli and his recruitment team got to work on the summer transfers, but here too their hands were somewhat tied. If you look on Transfermarkt, you’ll note that Juventus spent €137 million ($160m), which sounds like a lot until you realize that €105.8m ($123m) was to make permanent moves for players who were already at the club on loans: Chico Conceicao, Pierre Kalulu, Lloyd Kelly, Nico González (who then immediately loaned out to Atletico Madrid) and Michele Di Gregorio. In most cases, Juve had an obligation to make the deals permanent so, in fact, there wasn’t much room to operate in the summer. A classic case of the present burdened by the mistakes of the past.
Still, the club made four signings and here, you wonder how much they considered Tudor’s football credo.
Wide players Eden Zhegrova and João Mário made just two league starts between them. The other two arrivals were forwards: free agent Jonathan David (who signed a hefty contract that made him the club’s second-highest paid player) and Loïs Openda. Their return? Six combined league starts and one goal. It soon became obvious that Tudor, a stickler for his 3-4-2-1 system, was only going to play one center forward at a time and with Dusan Vlahovic sticking around, there were only so many minutes to dole out. Considering his trio of center forwards make up roughly 20% of Juve’s wage bill, that’s terrible resource allocation.
Tudor’s system, of course, also means three central defenders and there are only five in the squad, the bare minimum for a side competing in the Champions League. They make up less than 12% of the wage bill despite the fact there are three times as many of them on the pitch as there are center forwards. Again: resource allocation.
Comolli, you imagine, would probably say: “Gab, what do you want me to do? The club made more than half a billion Euros in losses in the past five seasons. Guys who came before me made decisions and commitments, and now I have to deal with the consequences of that.”
And, of course, he’d be right. The combination of COVID-19 and short-term thinking led to the accounting games and “buy now, pay later” shenanigans of the loan-plus-obligation deals that are severely limiting the club here and now. The fact that Filip Kostic, Daniele Rugani and Arek Milik (who last played football of any kind in June 2024) are still in the squad tells its own story. (Fun fact: Arthur is still a Juve player too although at least he’s on loan elsewhere, so you’re not reminded of past follies every time you see him.)
Then there are the ones who got away. Clubs make mistakes all the time when it comes to homegrown players — heck, Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer were at Manchester City, Declan Rice was at Chelsea — but Juve raise it to an art form of futility.
In the past 18 months, Juventus let Matìas Soulè, Dean Huijsen, Koni De Winter, Moise Kean and Nicolo’ Fagioli leave for combined fees of less than €85m; now their transfer valuations are two-and-a-half times that. (None of them, other than Kean, got a legitimate sustained shot at the first team.) It feels like they spent a fortune on their B-team — Juve Next Gen, who play in the third tier — not as a player development tool, but rather as a piggy bank to raid in order to fill accounting holes elsewhere.
We can talk about stability and long-term squad-building all we like, but first we need to recognize that, a bit like pollution, it always future generations who pay the price for past mistakes. Juve’s recent past is littered with so many blunders that whoever is in charge today is somewhat strait-jacketed.
And this context is what makes Juve’s next steps so interesting. They have a legitimate core of young(ish) talent locked up to long-term contracts that you can build around: Kenan Yildiz (20), David (25), Khephren Thuram (24), Conceicao (22), Andrea Cambiaso (25), Kalulu (25) — maybe free agent-to-be Vlahovic too if you get him to stick around at a reasonable price (i.e., a heck of a lot less than his expiring deal). But it will take time to cycle the toxins of past bad decisions out of the system and that’s why the idea of even considering a 66 year old like Spalletti (leaving aside his disastrous tenure with the national team) would be foolish.
Take your medicine now, suffer a little bit, learn from the past and you’ll have a brighter future.
Jannik Sinner won the Italian Open on Sunday. Photo: AFP
ROME:
Jannik Sinner has his eyes on a first Roland Garros title after winning the Italian Open on Sunday to claim a record-extending sixth consecutive Masters 1000 tournament victory.
World number one Sinner beat Casper Ruud 6-4, 6-4 to complete the ‘Golden Masters’ by winning all of the ATP’s top-ranked events, in the process becoming the first Italian men’s champion in Rome since Adriano Panatta 50 years ago.
Only Novak Djokovic had previously won all nine Masters 1000 events before Sunday, but there was little doubt about Sinner triumphing over the last 10 days.
Sinner heads into Roland Garros, which starts next weekend, on a 29-match winning streak and will be intent on banishing the ghosts of last year’s final when he wasted three championship points before losing to Carlos Alcaraz.
And his run of match wins is even longer in Masters 1000 tournaments — now at 34 — another record he has established in a season in which he has dominated the men’s tour.
Sinner can complete his collection of Grand Slams and, with his great rival Alcaraz out of action, few would bet against him securing a first title on Paris clay.
“I need to keep myself in form because there’s my most important tournament of the year coming up,” Sinner told reporters.
“I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself because the pressure comes anyway. The most important thing to do right now is take a break and do the right things.
“I don’t even want to think too much about tennis right now.”
Ruud has won more matches and tournaments on clay than anyone else on the men’s tour since the start of 2020 — his last title on the surface coming at the Madrid Masters last year — but he couldn’t beat Sinner for the first time.
‘Better and better’
Norwegian Ruud had never won a set against Sinner in any of their previous four meetings, but immediately improved on the fearful hammering he received here from the Italian last year by winning the first two games.
But Sinner broke straight back and took the lead in the match after an opening set in which the world number 25 held his own against a player he’d previously said “cannot lose”.
Sinner then broke Ruud again at the start of the second set and from there it was just a matter of time before he won the championship, even though Ruud performed with credit in front of a packed centre court crowd.
“I know that in football it’s a different story,” joked Ruud, whose country will play in a World Cup for the first time since 1998.
Norway reached this summer’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico at the expense of Italy, who in March failed for a third consecutive time to qualify for the global showpiece.
“I never played the big three in their prime… But I’m sure Roger, Novak, Rafa, 25, 26 years old was also the same feeling for the other players,” said Ruud of Sinner to reporters afterwards.
“I don’t see him getting any worse, unfortunately. You just have to think that you have to be better and better because he’s also going to get better and better.”
It was a golden Sunday for Italian tennis as Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori also won the men’s doubles title, beating second seeds Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos 7-6 (10/8), 6-7 (3/7), 10-3.
LONDON: World Cups are where rising stars of football quickly transform into global icons.
AFP Sport looks at five of the contenders to become the game’s next superstar at this year’s finals in the United States, Mexico and Canada:
Nico Paz (Argentina)
The son of former Argentine international Pablo Paz has opted to play for the world champions despite being born and raised in Spain.
A rising star in the Real Madrid academy, Paz has flourished in two years working under Cesc Fabregas since a move to Como in Italy.
Madrid are reportedly set to exercise their buyback option on the 21-year-old.
His technical ability and eye for goal from range has alerted Europe’s other top clubs.
Paz could have the daunting task of filling in for Lionel Messi with Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni expected to manage the 38-year-old’s minutes during the champions’ title defence.
Desire Doue (France)
Doue has already lit up the biggest stage in club football, winning the man-of-the-match award and scoring twice in Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League final thrashing of Inter Milan last year.
But this will be the 20-year-old’s first taste of a major international tournament.
Doue has a battle just to ensure he starts for Les Bleus among a dazzling display of attacking talent that includes Kylian Mbappe, Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembele and Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise.
But Doue gave Didier Deschamps a timely reminder of his quality with his first two international goals in a 3-1 friendly win over Colombia in France’s last outing in March.
Nico O’Reilly (England)
O’Reilly, 21, has already earned the trust of Pep Guardiola to become a regular for Manchester City.
Scorer of two goals from left-back in City’s League Cup final win over Arsenal in March, O’Reilly began his career as a goalscoring midfielder.
Guardiola has harnessed his blend of height, speed and skill as an attacking weapon from deep and may have solved a problem position for England coach Thomas Tuchel in the process.
England reached the final of Euro 2024 without a natural left-back for the majority of the tournament due to Luke Shaw’s lack of fitness.
“What a player,” said Guardiola. “He has made an incredible step up and he has had a lot of minutes, but he deserves it.”
Endrick (Brazil)
A teenage prodigy who made his Palmeiras debut at 16 and was snapped up by Real Madrid before his18th birthday, Endrick’s hopes of shining at the World Cup have been rekindled by a successful loan move at French club Lyon.
Endrick burst onto the international scene by scoring the winner against England at Wembley two years ago and becoming Brazil’s youngest goalscorer since Ronaldo in the process.
Relegated behind international team-mate Vinicius Junior and Mbappe after his big move to Madrid two years ago, the 19-year-old has found his scoring touch since his switch to France in January.
Often compared to another Brazilian great Romario for his squat but powerful physique, Endrick will be hoping to recreate the former’s success in scoring five goals as Brazil won the World Cup on US soil in 1994.
Pedri (Spain)
Spain’s latest passing metronome, Pedri has proven to be a fitting heir to Xavi Hernandez for both club and country.
After first rising to prominence as an 18-year-old at Euro 2020, Pedri was key to Spain’s run to conquering Europe two years ago in Germany, but injury prevented him from featuring in the semi-finals and final.
For Barcelona he has put his fitness troubles behind him under Hansi Flick, playing a starring role in back-to-back La Liga title triumphs over the past two seasons.
Pakistan’s young squash players are all set to showcase their talent at the 33rd Asian Junior Individual Squash Championships 2026, scheduled to be held from May 20 to 24 in Panzhihua, China.
According to Pakistan Squash Federation, the national contingent, led by Director Academies Group Captain (R) Irfan Asghar and Head Coach Fahim Gul, will compete against top emerging players from across Asia in the prestigious junior event.
Pakistan’s squad comprises five boys and two girls competing in different age categories.
In the boys’ events, Abdullah Nawaz will participate in the Under-19 category, Nouman Khan in Under-17, Ahmed Rayyan Khalil and Sohail Adnan in Under-15, while Mustafa Khan will feature in the Under-13 category.
In the girls’ competitions, Sehrish Ali and Mahnoor Ali will represent Pakistan in the Under-15 category.
The championship is regarded as one of Asia’s premier junior squash events and provides a major platform for young players to gain international exposure and improve continental rankings.
Pakistan squash officials expressed confidence that the young players would deliver strong performances and continue the country’s rich legacy in the sport.
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