For much of the past year, the idea of Dusan Vlahovic still wearing Juventus colours in September would have sounded like a clerical error rather than a footballing reality. His departure was presumed inevitable, the terminal point of a contract drifting toward expiry and a relationship seemingly at odds with itself. Equally improbable—indeed, unthinkable for most Juventini—was that Lloyd Kelly might still be at the club, let alone a protagonist. His half-season of mediocrity, coinciding cruelly with Dean Huijsen’s meteoric rise elsewhere, had become shorthand for the failings of sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli’s early tenure.
And yet
football delights in irony. On a thunderous night at the Allianz Stadium, both
men stood improbably cast as saviours. Vlahovic, summoned from the bench like an
avenging figure from myth, plundered two goals and delivered a last-gasp
assist. Kelly, the most maligned of winter arrivals, met that cross with a
diving header, not merely rescuing a point in a chaotic 4–4 draw with Borussia
Dortmund, but re-scripting his own narrative. For once, redemption wore black
and white.
Collapse
and Resistance
The match
itself was less a measured tactical duel than a pendulum, swinging between
brilliance and calamity. Juventus’s first half embodied control—Dortmund failed
even a single shot on target—yet the second half devolved into a defensive
unravelling. Long-range efforts, conceded with alarming regularity, once again
became Juve’s undoing, and Michele Di Gregorio—so often serene—succumbed to the
stage’s magnitude with errors that cut deep into his side’s resistance.
But this
game was less about errors than about response. In years past, Juve would have
folded. The ghosts of 2021–22, of lethargic collapse in the face of adversity,
still hover near. Instead, the team played with a stubborn vitality, answering
Dortmund’s blows with equal ferocity. This was not aesthetic beauty—it was
resilience, that battered virtue which Juventus fans demand but have too rarely
glimpsed of late.
Tudor’s
Mark
For this,
Igor Tudor deserves credit. The Croatian coach, already contending with
absences and the fragile health of a squad still in flux, deployed his familiar
3-4-2-1, balancing pragmatism with audacity. His timing with substitutions—most
notably the earlier introduction of Vlahovic and João Mário—contrasted sharply
with the hesitancy shown against Inter just days before. Here, Tudor managed
not only bodies but belief.
Yet the
flaws remain unmissable. Juve continue to cede the top of their own penalty arc
with a carelessness that borders on fatalism. Both Nmecha and Couto’s goals
were products of this neglect, the kind of systemic lapse that will haunt them
until addressed. If Tudor has instilled a spirit of defiance, he must now graft
onto it a defensive vigilance.
Symbolism
in the Storm
What
elevates this draw beyond its statistics is its symbolism. Vlahovic, nearly
gone, becomes a symbol of continuity and unfinished business. Kelly, nearly
discarded, symbolizes football’s cruelty and its capacity for sudden
absolution. Their pairing in the final act—the Serb’s assist, the Englishman’s
diving redemption—was less coincidence than narrative poetry, a reminder of why
we cling to this game even when it veers toward the absurd.
Juventus,
for all their flaws, have rediscovered something long absent: the ability to
rise rather than retreat. That is not yet greatness, nor is it security. But it
is a start. And in a season teetering on the knife-edge between calamity and
rebirth, sometimes the start is everything.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
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