I’m all for accountability after poor performances, both from players and from coaches. On Wednesday night, after getting knocked out of the Coppa Italia by relegation-threatened Empoli, Juventus boss Thiago Motta took it to a new level and introduced a whole moral dimension that, frankly, isn’t his business to do.
“I feel shame, and I hope the players do too,” he said postmatch. “We have hit rock-bottom: our performance was unacceptable. We need to apologise to the fans, to the history of this club.”
A bit over the top, but fair enough. A week earlier, Juventus had been eliminated from the Champions League by PSV Eindhoven following a second-half display that was about as inept as their first half against Empoli on Wednesday. Given that they’re eight points back in the Serie A title picture, maybe the realization hit Motta that his last remaining chance for silverware — other than the Arsene Wenger Fourth-Place Trophy — had evaporated.
Then, he doubled down.
“Our supporters were far too gentle with us, especially in the first half,” he added. “I know we’re going to get criticised, I hope that criticism is harsh!”
It’s not often you hear a coach sound positively masochistic — especially when said coach, just a week earlier, had waved off questions about the PSV Eindhoven defeat by saying: “I regret nothing. If I had to do it over again, I would have made all the same choices.” A week later, he’s sounding like one of a re-education camp graduate engaging in self-criticism.
Or is he? Because in those same postmatch talking points, Motta went on to trot out the same fuzzy, metaphysical culprits that coaches always love to bring up when things go wrong: effort and attitude.
“Attitude is non-negotiable … it’s the first thing I tried to teach them when I took this job,” he said. “This is true in football, but more importantly, in life. I will never accept what I saw against Empoli!” Oh, and he didn’t stop there.
“There are some who take without giving,” Motta continued. “It makes me physically ill and ashamed! I have never criticised any of my teams in the past because the attitude was always there! This time it’s different! You have to give everything out there on the pitch and respect Juventus …”
And then, sounding like a frustrated parent scolding a child who’s been caught doing something they shouldn’t, Motta added: “It’s my responsibility, I obviously wasn’t able to teach them the importance of having the right attitude and respecting the Juventus uniform.”
There are several reasons all of this is problematic.
First off, it’s playing to the gallery in the most crass way, telling the angry fans what they want to hear: the players don’t care. They don’t love the club like you do, they don’t respect the club like you do, they just care about their influencer girlfriends, tricked-out Lambos and paychecks. It helps rile up the angry villagers with pitchforks and torches, fine. The problem: once you’ve thrown the players under the bus (and the transfer window is closed), you’re stuck with them and they’re stuck with you, a guy who questions their attitude in public. Not to mention the fact that saying “some take without giving” is only going to lead to speculation about who he means, or which offenders are worse offenders than others.
(For what it’s worth, and I was only watching on TV, a number of Juventus players — from Federico Gatti to Kephren Thuram to Dusan Vlahovic — seemed to be lacking quality or tactical instruction more than “attitude.”)
Second, Motta lecturing about the importance of “attitude” in life is just out of place. Those aren’t his children; they’re grown men. They don’t need his self-help lectures about how to be happy and successful adults in their private life. Do that on your own time, for your own benefit, and stick to your job.
Third, it raises an uncomfortable question. If Juve were putrid against Empoli because they had the wrong “attitude,” what was the problem against PSV? It wasn’t your tactical approach, because you told us you regretted nothing. Was their “attitude” wrong then too and you just hid it from us? Are they maybe not that good? Is their coach not that good?
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, for the rest of this news cycle — at least until their game against Verona on Monday night — we end up talking about his “shame” and their “attitude” rather than other stuff that might be relevant, because there are myriad reasons why faith in Motta’s Juventus team is at an ebb.
There’s the fact that they recorded a whopping €87 million net spend — a figure that, in real terms, is even higher if you consider the many loans, some with an obligation to buy, and the fact that they’re spending more than €11m for the privilege of having Randal Kolo Muani, Renato Veiga and Lloyd Kelly hang around until the end of the season — and the team is a slow and laboured model of inconsistency even when they win.
There’s the fact that that the recruitment strategy seems to fit together as smoothly as Travis Scott performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: the highest-paid player and top scorer (Vlahovic, who earns more than every single player in the Premier League bar one) regularly gets benched, the most expensive summer signing (midfielder Teun Koopmeiners) has been a bust thus far, and the second-most expensive summer signing (Douglas Luiz) has been on the bench for 14 of the 17 occasions he’s been in the squad.
Then there are all the issues Motta and sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli inherited or could do little about: a club that lost in excess of €325m over the past two seasons (a legacy of the disastrous end of the Andrea Agnelli regime), that is disentailing itself from a bunch of bad contracts, that endured season-ending injuries to their backup center-forward Arek Milik and half of the first-choice back four (Juan Cabal and Gleison Bremer), and that portion of the Juve fan base (and media) who are incurably nostalgic for the Max Allegri era and that brand of football.
All of these are complex issues that are tough to sort through. It’s not clear at all if Motta’s sudden “shame” and faux accountability are part of the problem or part of the solution.
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