A goalkeeping masterclass ensured Trebor Mahtal ticked W off his Alphabet Challenge by leading West Ham to the Europa Conference League. That saw Mahtal add W to A, E, L, M, P, S and U, winning major trophies with eight clubs whose names begin with different leaders of the alphabet. So only 18 to go!
The biggest managerial news of the summer was Pep Guardiola departing Man City after a phenomenal 27 years at the club. But, of course, Mahtal couldn’t apply as he’d already won the Premier League with Man United. Instead, he applied for vacancies at big clubs across Europe and teams that would tick off challenging letters, and it didn’t take long for interview opportunities to arise. He soon received two offers from Germany, one of which was a massively in debt Bayer Leverkusen (which Mahtal wasn’t sure how they’d managed), and one from Turkish giant Galatasaray. But the biggest offer ticked off both a big club and a challenging letter, which took Mahtal to his third Italian side.
Who Are Juventus Football Club?
Juventus FC is a professional club based in the Italian city of Turin. The club was founded by a group of students from the Massimo d’Azeglio Lyceum school in 1897, initially as an athletics club under the name Sport-Club Juventus. It became a football club two years later and joined the Italian Football Championship in 1900. The team initially wore pink and black kits, but changed to the famous black and white stripes inspired by English club Notts County.
Juventus is the most successful club in the history of Italian football, winning its first national title in 1905 and going on to win 36 league titles, 15 Coppa Italia and two Champions Leagues. However, the club – nicknamed The Old Lady in the 1930s, based on a pun around having an ageing team despite its name meaning youth in Latin – hasn’t won Serie A since 2020 and hasn’t been champion of Europe since 1996. In this save, it’s finished 2nd four times but has yet to win that elusive Scudetto, although it did win the Europa League in 2037 and Coppa Italia in 2024, 2027 and 2035.
it would be remiss of us not to mention the infamous Calciopoli scandal that saw Juventus stripped of their 2005 Serie A title and relegated to Serie B for the first and only time in its history. But this highly controversial matter, due to Inter Milan’s alleged involvement, is long behind the club as it welcomes exciting manager Mahtal to Turin in 2043. Last season, Juventus finished in a lowly 8th position, which saw manager Ben Lawless jump before he was pushed to join AS Monaco. As a result, Mahtal won’t have the distraction of European football this season.
Mahtal walks into a massive club that plays at the Allianz Stadium, which was built in 2011 and is supported by strong infrastructure of 20 youth facilities and 17 junior coaching and youth recruitment and 16 training facilities. Unusually, the club has decent finances with £83m in the bank, a £119m transfer budget and a £3.4m weekly wage budget, of which it was spending £2.8m.
It was no surprise that Juve struggled last season as Mahtal discovered a first-team squad that, just like in the 1930s, was littered with old deadwood. So he oversaw his customary massive clearout, selling 21 players for a profit of £92m. That left the squad a little light, but the best players remaining were outstanding Cameroonian striker Pascal Ngomba, exciting homegrown 21-year-old attacker Stefano Fabbro and Indian/Spanish midfielder Karthik Singh. Other key players will be Argentinian winger Luciano Vázquez, Ivorian midfielder Tagro Lignon, full backs Marco Molinari and Michele Stefanelli and Portuguese goalkeeper António Lanita.
Mahtal added to that by spending £78m on Croatian attacker Sreten Colaric, who he’d agreed to pre-sign before he left Atalanta. He was joined by wonderkid centre back Seref Ozturk for up to £54m from AZ, Mahtal’s long-term target 18-year-old attacker Gastón Díaz for up to £26m from River, winger Viktor Belezyako for £10m from Benfica, and centre back Cihat Snepvangers, who Mahtal thought was better than star-ratings suggested, for £6.5m from Willem II. Then in January, he added Midtjylland winger Peter Callo for £14.75m and attacker Magnus Bjortuft for £8.5m from Odd.
Mahtal initially decided a 4-2-4 would be the best option, but eventually tweaked that to a 4-2-3-1. He was pretty concerned by the lack of defensive and midfield depth, so Colaric, who looked perfectly suited to dropping deeper, started training as a centre midfielder to plug the gap.
Getting Started At Juventus
The bookies didn’t fancy Juve’s chances, predicting a 7th place finish with 33/1 title odds. Milan are 2/1 favourites ahead of holders Inter, Mahtal’s former side Roma (8/1), Napoli (10/1), Juve’s city rivals Torino (11/1) and Parma (14/1).
Colaric announced himself in style as he picked up the ball out wide, cut inside and unleashed an unstoppable strike 3 minutes into his debut at home to Parma. A wasteful performance followed before Lignon idiotically got himself sent off and Parma equalised. Another debutant restored the lead as Belezyako headed in from a freekick before another cost them the win through Ozturk’s own goal from a corner. They also weren’t great at Verona as Singh got sent off and only a late equaliser earned another 2-2. Mahtal’s second home game was against his former club Roma and they again got a good start through a brilliant Vázquez goal. But they conceded to another set piece to open with three draws.
The tricky start continued with a 3-2 defeat at Napoli, but Juve got their first win as Fabbro, Ozturk and Singh led a 3-0 at Spezia and Ngomba finally scored in the same result at home to Bologna. But the away form continued to look a problem as Mahtal suffered a 1-0 defeat at his former club Atalanta. Colaric scored on his first appearance as a midfielder in a 2-1 win over Cagliari then scored twice in the first 25 minutes to lead a 3-2 win at Empoli. However, they didn’t have enough to compete with Italy’s best, as proven by getting dominated in a 2-0 defeat at Inter.
Ngomba finally began to deliver on his ability, scoring a brace in a 3-1 win over city rivals Torino. They stepped up a level to earn a 1-1 at home to Milan then beat Fiorentina 2-0 before finishing the year by crushing Salernitana 5-0 led by another Colaric brace both laid on by Belezyako and Yalcin’s first goal for the club as Ngomba jetted off to the African Nations. That sent Juve into 2044 in a solid 5th place, 7 points above Torino in 8th but a huge 13 behind pacesetters Inter and Roma, for whom Mahtal’s former strike hero Giacomo Cobianchi led Serie A with 16 goals.
Targeting European Qualification
Juve began the new year with a defeat at Udinese but beat Verona 3-1 before Díaz’s first goal earned a point at Parma. They continued to struggle against the bigger sides, losing 2-1 at Roma and a wasteful 1-1 at home to Napoli, in which Mahtal switched to a more traditional 4-3-3, before again losing 2-1 at Roma in the Coppa Italia quarter-finals.
Bjortuft scored 50 minutes into his home debut to secure a 1-0 over Spezia. But Mahtal transitioned towards a 3-5-2 approach towards the end of the season, which required all his wingers to retrain as wing backs and, unsurprisingly, was a struggle at first. But it soon delivered three consecutive wins without conceding, including Ngomba earning a 1-0 over Lazio in Mahtal’s 800th game in football management, before Fabbro nicked a 2-1 derby win at Torino to move Juve into Champions League contention.
Colaric’s strike earned a solid 1-1 at 3rd-place Milan, which left Juve three points behind them going into the final five games. However, they were put to the sword by the league’s top scorer, as Fabricio’s hat trick – which took him to 30 in 34 only to be overtaken by Inter’s Aimati who scored SEVEN in an 8-0 win over Atalanta! – earned Sassuolo a clinical 3-0 win at Allianz Stadium. Colaric scored the only goal at Fiorentina a week later, which saw 4th to 7th separated by just 4 points with three games remaining.
They exploded into life as Ngomba bagged four in a 5-0 thumping of Sampdoria while Napoli lost 3-0 at home to Parma to take Juve into the top four for the first time all season. They celebrated Mahtal’s 60th birthday with a dominant 4-0 win at relegated Salernitanam, while his former club Roma wrapped up the league title. Napoli thrashed Lazio 5-1 the next day to keep Juve 2 points clear going into the final day, on which Juve hosted Udinese and Napoli went to Verona. Napoli scored after 4 minutes and Juve responded with Ngomba tapping in the opener. A goalkeeper howler gifted Udinese an equaliser but Colaric’s excellent header immediately restored the lead and Fabbro’s superb turn and finish doubled it. Ngambo slammed home a penalty to make sure of it and wrapped up his hat trick with another before a late own goal completed the rout.
That saw Juve wrap up Champions League football with a 4th-place finish. They finished on 72 points after 21 wins, 9 draws and 8 defeats, scoring 77 and conceding 43, a sizeable 16 points behind champions Roma. The switch to 3-5-2 was a big factor in Juve’s improvement, as they won 9 out of 11 games from the start of March.
Promising Signs At Juventus
Juve had certainly made progress under Mahtal as, having sold off most of the ageing squad and bedded exciting youngsters into a new formation, he led back into the Champions League and the club’s best finish for four years. And the potential at Juve was proven by Díaz, Bjortuft and Callo coming 8th, 11th and 12th on NxGn 2044. Ngomba led the way with 21 goals in 33 games followed by the impressive Fabbro, who got 12 goals and 9 assists in 34 games, Colaric (11 goals and 6 assists) and Singh (10 goals and 9 assists).
Mahtal knew there was still plenty of work to do at the club, but was pleased with the improvement through his first season. Could he move Juve closer to Italy’s top sides in his second season? Join us on Friday to find out!
Football Manager Addict 
Leave a comment