Spalletti admits Juventus 'inferior in every way' after 3-0 Lazio humiliation
Juventus outclassed at the Allianz as Lazio run riot
Luciano Spalletti pulled no punches after Juventus were dismantled 3-0 by Lazio in Turin, confessing his side were second best across the board. The Bianconeri, still riding the high of Thursday's 2-1 Europa League comeback win at Celta Vigo, were brought crashing back to earth in Serie A and never looked like salvaging a result.
Lazio took control from the outset and sealed the points through Oliver Provstgaard's header, a Gustav Isaksen angled drive and a late Fisayo Dele-Bashiru counter-attack.
Spalletti: 'It was an inferior Juventus'
The coach, serving a touchline ban following his altercation with Fabio Pisacane of Cagliari, watched from the stands as assistant manager Marco Domenichini took charge on the bench. Speaking to DAZN Italia afterwards, Spalletti was brutally honest about what he witnessed.
"It was certainly an inferior Juventus, a team that did not control the game, nor have ideas on where to take the game," Spalletti confessed. "It's hard to explain it even to ourselves, because we returned at 4am on Friday from Vigo, then let the players recover with the physical performance staff.
"We tried to change a few things, there were six new players, but we were slow both in legs and mind. In football, you can see the opponents, you can see the ball, and if you are too slow to react, show no heart or rhythm, tactics and systems become irrelevant."
The coach reserved further criticism for his players' mentality: "Without tempo, without ideas, without running, without the desire to work hard, and when there is fragility in duels, letting heads drop when things aren't working, those are all things I did not like."
Fans turn on the squad as title hopes fade
The supporters who stayed until the final whistle jeered and insulted the squad, who now sit eight points off the top of Serie A. Juventus have just 11 points from their opening eight rounds — one fewer than Igor Tudor's side had at this stage last season, when he was facing the sack, and two fewer than Thiago Motta managed after seven games in his brief campaign. The trajectory, Spalletti accepts, is heading the wrong way.
"Clearly, we need to analyse and there are only two possibilities. We can either discuss the way we talk to the team, or the working method. Something has to be modified, evidently," he said. "I was surprised by this performance too, so I need to think hard about it, because I haven't changed my way of talking to the players, I want to communicate with them, to have a good rapport with them. That has always been my way.
"Maybe I need to analyse my own rapport with the team, because it is honest and fair. They will recognise themselves that what we did today is not good enough."
Gattuso's warning on player mentality
Spalletti was also drawn into a wider debate about player character after Gennaro Gattuso suggested modern footballers are quicker to give up at the first sign of difficulty. "The important thing is to show a reaction, not abandon yourself to events," Spalletti replied. "Our careers aren't just down to luck, we've got to fight for those opportunities. We are forced to learn that lesson. There are youngsters today who fight and others who let themselves fall down at the first stumble, but every person has a different character."
Spalletti had, on 17 October, warned of a 'quicksand' narrative being built around the club and insisted he would watch the Lazio game from the stands while banned — a prophecy that, on this evidence, has come true in the worst possible fashion.