Referee's Eye: Why Juventus and Milan Stall Against the Low Block

Minute 71 in Cagliari. The ball goes out to the left flank, Juventus's winger takes it, looks up, and cuts inside onto his right foot. Three opposing shirts are already standing as a wall in front of the box. The shot goes straight into the nearest shin. I sit in the technical room, still holding a whistle out of professional habit, and ask myself whether I would have had to blow for anything in this match. No. There is no foul. But something else is wrong, and it is not written in the laws.

That moment is why I understand Massimo Mauro's choice of the words "embarrassing". The former midfielder who wore the shirts of Juventus and Napoli, now a television commentator, said plainly on Goal.com that Juventus and AC Milan play embarrassing football whenever they meet a deep-lying defence. He ranks Roma as the only side equipped to chase Inter, concedes that Napoli are also better equipped despite a poor start, and places Juventus and Milan beneath both. A compact, sharp, easily spread remark.

For someone in my trade, the notable detail lies elsewhere. Almost everything Mauro says is opinion. Twelve of the thirteen points I noted carry the label of personal view. Only one is actual data. And yet the remark is still strong enough to shape how people read an entire matchday.

What does that data point say? Juventus created two to three chances at Cagliari, and only after Alajbegovic came on and delivered two proper crosses from the flank. That is the only measurable marker in the whole piece. For me, it is enough to reconstruct an attacking model, and that model has a name: cut inside, never cross, never play the through-ball.

Mauro's league hierarchy is fairly clear. Inter are the benchmark, Roma and Napoli are better equipped, Juventus and Milan trail behind. What stands out is that he does not rank them by budget. He argues Juventus and Milan have the players, they simply use them badly. A gap of that kind is far cheaper and faster to close than a gap in squad quality — which is why I remain cautiously optimistic about both clubs.

Both Juventus and Milan build their attacks through two wingers. They receive on the flank, cut inside onto the stronger foot, and shoot. They do not cross. They do not return the ball to the centre-forward. They do not play a single pass that breaks a line. The entire firepower is funnelled into one channel, and a low block only has to stand in the right place to neutralise it. Mauro offers a rough marker: those wingers score about four goals a season. Four goals a season for the position tasked with creating the unpredictable. People watch football with their hearts; I watch it with the lines already drawn — and the line here is this: an attack with a single entrance is not an attack, it is a doorway.

The root problem is not on the flank; it is the space just behind the centre-forward. Both teams lack quality in the attacking-midfield zone. There is no No.10 good enough to link play and deliver the final pass. When the midfield creates nothing, the flank becomes the only road to goal. Block that road and you block the whole team. In refereeing I learned that when a side has only one option, defending becomes boringly simple: you do not need to guess, only to stand in the right position.

What Mauro adds is the absence of the through-ball. Neither team shows any idea of playing a pass behind the back line. A deep block fears only two things: the cross from wide and the ball slipped in behind. If the opponent can do neither, the defence can drop forever without being punished. They defend inside their own box without any fear of being turned.

Douglas Luiz is the clearest symptom of the disease, not its cause. A safe passer who only plays one-metre balls cannot conjure anything against a defence already set. But when the whole system has nobody playing through-balls, his short passing is the logical consequence: who do you play long to, when nobody runs into space? I dislike turning an individual into a target. A head referee is not a man who never errs; what matters is what he does after the error. The same goes for players.

Alajbegovic's cameo is a rare natural experiment. When a Juventus winger actually crossed — two proper deliveries — the team immediately produced two to three chances. Same line-up, same game state, only a different way of putting the ball into the box. For me this is the strongest evidence in the whole piece, stronger than any remark about attitude or spirit.

One more link remains: Kenan Yildiz. Mauro calls the young Turkish player the most important figure in the Juventus squad, and his absence is treated as a genuine loss. That says two things: Juventus are placing the creative burden on a player not yet twenty-four, and when he is missing, the attacking system collapses faster than usual. Based on my experience of following matches, a team that depends on one individual at that age usually pays for it in the densest stretch of the calendar.

At this point I have to put the whistle down and speak about the quality of evidence. Twelve of thirteen points are opinion. Only one is data. Mauro's conclusion that Juventus and Milan are "embarrassing" is like a referee awarding a penalty on a hunch: the decision may be right, but the process cannot be defended. I have had matches I got wrong, and from them I learned what fairness means. Fairness is not the feeling of being right, but the ability to show why you are right. Every argument in the stands and on the pitch has an answer sitting in some camera angle — it is just that this time the commentary never brought the camera to the right angle.

One detail still makes me pause. The article attaches the names Amorim and Spalletti to Juventus and Milan, yet that pairing does not match what I know about these two coaches' tenures. I leave it in the category of to be verified. For someone who lives on data, one wrong detail is enough to slow down an otherwise correct conclusion. As for Napoli, the phrase "poor start" shows the sample is still tiny — the season is only a few rounds old, and every conclusion is easy to reverse.

In the coming rounds I will track Juventus's quality chance count against deep-lying opponents. If that number keeps sitting below one expected goal per match, the risk of falling behind is real, and pressure on the coach will rise with every winless round. I will also watch Yildiz's condition, because his presence directly decides the attacking output. And I will wait to see whether any coach is willing to reopen the crossing channel — Alajbegovic has already shown the price of closing it.

If Juventus find a passer between the lines, Mauro's story will turn on its own without anyone arguing back. If they do not, the word "embarrassing" will find a place to stand for longer than a single matchday.