Thiago Motta will celebrate his 42nd birthday on Wednesday. He’ll probably go out to a nice dinner with his wife somewhere in Turin, enjoying every bit of the fine cuisine that Northern Italy has to offer a man who knows a thing or two about what the country has to offer.
He will also be ringing in his birthday knowing that his Juventus squad are the now the only team in Serie A to win their first two matches and are sitting atop the league table.
Sure, it’s the first 180 minutes of a new season, but it’s quite nice, ain’t it?
Juventus finished up their back-to-back Mondays to begin the Motta era with their second straight 3-0 win. This time, the back half of the Monday night football extravaganza came against the only other team that could have had six points after their opening two matches, Hellas Verona, with Dusan Vlahovic scoring a goal on each side of halftime and another Next Gen alum making his first career Juve start, Nicolo Savona, finding the back of the net. All of it now means that Juventus, after the first two weeks of the new season, is the lone Serie A club to be a perfect 2-for-2 to start the new campaign.
The players have fully embraced Motta and his brand of play, and the results — even on a night where they don’t exactly have the best start like they did Monday at the Bentegodi — are speaking for themselves. It’s an impressive start no doubt — and especially so when you consider some of the biggest signings of the summer are either current injured, just signed or still hanging out in Bergamo waiting for the well to finally break.
So, just to recap, through two their first two matches under Motta, Juventus are:
- Atop the table.
- The high-scoring team in the league.
- The best defense in the league, with just one shot on goal allowed.
- Absolutely cooking.
Yes, this is me, a longtime Juventus fan who has seen things turn bad quickly, totally getting fired up by a small sample size. That is because, while the opposition isn’t what is waiting for Juventus come September and October, it’s very much encouraging. It’s a change for the better, and Juventus are doing what we’ve hoped they’d do for years now against provincial sides in back-to-back matches to open this new season.
Of course, the thing that makes this win a little more impressive than the last one is the fact that Hellas Verona absolutely dismantled Antonio Conte’s Napoli by, you guessed it, a 3-0 scoreline last weekend and it’s not like the Bentegodi has always been a place where Juve’s found a massive amount of success. Like I said, the start to things wasn’t great, but once the midway point of the first half came and went, Juve found their stride.
And the rest, as they say, was Thiago Motta got to celebrate some goals with Carlo Pinsoglio.
Knowing full well that this Juventus squad was both playing multiple Next Gen alums who had little to no Serie A experience and still waiting for very important players to arrive, the work that Motta has done can’t go under-appreciated. These could have been Monday nights in which Juve dropped points and had a very unsettled tone heading into the first big match of the season against Roma this coming weekend.
Instead, they’ve hit the ground running and have to be carrying a whole lot of confidence going into the final fixture before the first international break arrives.
That’s something we haven’t been able to say after the second match of the season the last couple of years. There’s been 3-0 wins and then relative duds. This time around, though, that dud didn’t arrive. It was a lot of the same of what we saw seven days earlier in Turin.
I know I said it last week, but I’ll repeat it: The first impression Thiago Motta is making is damn impressive. Because of that, I hope he enjoys all of the Brasato al Barolo he wants during his birthday dinner. Enjoy, Mister, because you deserve it.
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS
- The very yellow away kit is a little more tolerable when it’s accompanied by a Juventus win.
- Juventus are still undefeated this season when Federico Gatti wears the captain’s armband.
- Juventus completed 619 passes against Hellas Verona. It feels like it would take a month for Juve to do that last season.
- The average age of Juventus’ starting lineup last Monday against Como: 24.5.
- The average ago of Juventus’ starting lineup this Monday against Hellas Verona: 24.1.
- In his first two matches on the big squad, Samuel Mbangula has a goal, two assists and has won a penalty. Let’s just go ahead and extend that contract already, Cristiano.
- What Mbangula has done over these two starts is something we all predicted to happen, right? Of course we did!
- Mbangula has two assists in two matches this season. He’s already halfway to matching what Filip Kostic did all of last season.
- Mbangula and Kenan Yildiz are both tied for the early lead in assists in Serie A. That’s cool.
- That Yildiz assist on Vlahovic’s goal was great mainly because of how the goal came about. If Manuel Locatelli doesn’t pressure the ball in the way he did, that goal doesn’t happen. Yildiz put in the perfect pass and Vlahovic had a really impressive finish with a defender on either side of him to put Juve in front. Just well done all the way around.
- Speaking Locatelli, the man looks reborn under Thiago Motta. That’s why you don’t boo a guy at his home stadium during a preseason friendly. Maybe wait to see what a guy who is coming off a tough season can do when he’s got a fresh start under a new manager. That’s just me thinking out loud, though.
- It looks like Vlahovic will continue to do that silly little run-up during his PK attempts. But hey, just keep making them, Dusan, and we will be just OK with all that.
- Holy crap was Bremer an absolute wall in defense tonight. Looks like his adjustment to a four-man backline is going pretty damn well right now.
- It took 173 minutes, but Michele Di Gregorio actually had to make a save as a Juventus player. And it was a pretty good one on a close-range shot attempt.
- Nicolo Savona?! Nicolo Savona!
- Pretty cool for a kid who’s been at Juventus since he was 8 years old to score in his first-ever Juventus start. The magic touch from Thiago Motta strikes again.
- Lorenzo Anghelè?! Lorenzo Anghelè!!
- Jonas Rouhi?! Jonas Rouhi!
- Thiago Motta is just giving debuts to all of the kids and the most surprising ones just seem to be working out about as well as we could have hoped. The kids are doing quite alright.
- A lot like last week against Como, Juan Cabal did some good things but also showed that there’s still plenty to work on — especially when it comes to his passing. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now because he’s making a big step up from Hellas Verona to Juventus and thrown into the starting lineup, but it’s not exactly a smooth start so far.
- As I mentioned in the preview to this one, I expected Douglas Luiz to start. So of course it was Nicolo Fagioli who paired with Locatelli in the 4-2-3-1. Yep, nailed that one!
- I dunno about you guys, but I’m very happy to have the glass or two of bourbon after a Juve game be because they won and played well rather than, well, whatever the hell it was that we saw during the second half of last season. Cheers, folks.
