Andrea Pirlo as a manager

- A thread

Andrea Pirlo enrolled in the UEFA Pro Licence courses at Coverciano in August 2019. On 30 July 2020, Pirlo was appointed head coach of Juventus U23. 9 days later, he was appointed head coach of the first team. Pirlo received his UEFA Pro Licence on 16 September 2020.

His first competitive match as manager was against Sampdoria with a decisive 3-0 win, short and quick passing made it visible what his tactical approach would be. He also played a 3-4-1-2 formation whilst attacking and a 4-4-2 in defence, something he has stuck to religiously.

After a promising start came frustration with 3 consecutive draws with two of them coming without the presence of Corona-affacted Cristiano Ronaldo. Upon his return as a substitute against Spezia, he scored two goals and saw the scoreline go from 1-1 to 4-1.

Over reliance?

After Cristiano's return, Juve's prolificance in front of goal increased however problems in midfield remained, the chemistry between the players was still not where it should have been, losing posession ever so often in the middle of the pitch and allowing goals cheaply.

The best game of the season and by far the best since Atletico came against Barcelona, giving them their first UCL home loss in 7 years. Pirloball primed with control of the midfield and meaningful posession, 2 pens from Cr7 and THAT McKennie volley sent us top of the group.

They couldn't get the ball from us and lost it due to our high press. After the 3rd goal we sat back in classic Italian style and defended superbly to ensure we didn't concede and kept the goal advantage to come 1st in the group. Buffon was class and a good reunion for the GOATs.

The Fiorentina game was not entirely Pirlos fault but some of his inexperience was shown here. After going a man down, Ramsey was subbed off, meaning we had 2 midfielders and lost the midfield battle and the only posession we had was not very meaningfull.

Pirlo's high line was sliced through as Vlahovic ran in behind and scored. By now it has become evident due to the amount of chances conceded that the high line isn't a great fit as Bonucci isn't fast enough anymore to be the Libero he once was. The refereeing didn't help either.

Problems of Pirlo's era;

- As stated before, Bonucci can't cover to stop the balls played through anymore

- We need to start keeping a lower tempo, our current one isn't suitable to our formation and we lose the ball often

- Our fluidity in changing formations is very poor

My thoughts;

Pirlo is very inexperienced and it shows, it will take time for him to fix his errors and he's already shown signs of that. The consistency will improve and with the modern tactics he brings, we can't dominate Serie A anymore but we can be optimistic in Europe.