And it demonstrates once again the planning difficulties of Juventus.
“Chelsea have opened up the possibility of taking Vlahovic as a counterpart for Lukaku”. With a tweet of just a few lines, Gianluca Di Marzio sent the dinner to the Juventus fans, who already didn’t digest the idea of seeing their starting striker leave in exchange for the unwelcome former Inter player, and who now even saw the hypothesis of a direct exchange between the two: if before there was the hope that the money deriving from the sale of Dusan could be invested in a new exciting player – one above all Jonathan David – the exchange would be the definitive tombstone. However, freeing ourselves from the superstructures of fan support and personal opinion on the two players, let’s try to ask ourselves: Is Lukaku-Vlahovic really all-round madness or is there something we are not considering?
First of all, if we exclude sensational self-sabotage at Chelsea, the exchange between Vlahovic and Lukaku will hardly be the move capable of restore Juve’s balance sheet. The Serbian centre-forward has a residual budget of around 55 million euros, while that of the Belgian, paid by Chelsea over 110 million euros, is still around 70 million, therefore hypothesizing a substantial economic adjustment by the Blues is decidedly unlikely . A possible overvaluation of the two cards, on the contrary, would generate a useful capital gain in the immediate future, but would burden the two teams with two players with a very high annual cost, a problem which would mainly concern Juve, given that Luke would appear, given the age, essentially unsaleable without falling into capital losses. Even the salary of the two players is similar – we are talking about figures of around 10 million euros – but Juve would save on Lukaku thanks to the growth decree, although we are certainly not talking about hyperbolic figures which alone can justify the exchange. In short, the Vlahovic-Lukaku exchange is a market move with technical rather than economic reasons, and it is as such that it must be evaluated.
The technical discrepancies
There are mainly two, linked together, the aspects in which Dusan Vlahovic has disappointed expectations in the last season: the defense of the ball away from his own goal and the ability to clean up balls and sort them for teammates. In the first 5 months of Juventus, thanks to a good though not excellent physical condition due to the pubalgiaVlahovic became the offensive playmaker in fact of the team, target of every ball in depth and of every throw on the figure, replacing Morata who had struggled so much in the game with his back to goal before him. On the wings of enthusiasm, corroborated by goals and good performances, Vlahovic initially sang and carried the cross without particular failures but, as has happened to every Juve striker in the recent past, he went through a negative period, thanks to the flare-up of pubalgia, and limits have emerged in situations considered fundamental for Juve’s game.
Compared to Vlahovic, Lukaku has a better ability to defend the ball with his back to goal, not only because he is physically more massive (3 cm and 5 kg of difference are not enough as a justification), but because by nature he is inclined to want to feel the opponent on him like a futsal pivot, knowing he can dominate him when contact occurs , protecting the ball but also moving it with the body and flying away in progression. Not infrequently we see him move to the wing in order to find a hand-to-hand clash with the defender, and with full-backs the mismatch is often such as to require the opposing team to double which naturally generates space for teammates.
When they press you high up, Lukaku becomes essential in providing support for the midfielder and in defending the ball to then act as a bank for the winger.
From there, a world opens up in front of you and more solutions to go on goal. pic.twitter.com/E35DhiZYZu— Scofield (@Ale_Scofield) May 14, 2023
In addition to this peculiar situation, however, there are many others that do Ancelotti-like raise an eyebrow when imagining Lukaku in Allegri’s Juve: if it is true that the Belgian 9 is good at protecting the ball, it is certainly not possible to define him as a center forward with a refined foot, and there are no elements – if not more experience due to age – to think him more suitable to sew the game than Vlahovic. Indeed, several other obscure points lead us to think that Lukaku could find himself in difficulty like and more than his predecessors in certain situations.
Lukaku played his best season under the guidance of Antonio Conte in the year of the Nerazzurri’s last Scudetto, supported by three fundamental elements: an excellent physical condition, codified offensive schemes and a synergistic connection with the teammate: three conditions that at the moment would not exist in the event of a move to Juve.
The best Lukaku, in addition to moving his opponents physically, was unmanageable in progression: he swept away opponents like Crash Bandicoot with the Aku Aku mask and, albeit for limited periods of the match, was capable of covering large portions of the field. This Lukaku, on the other hand, comes from a season played in fits and starts in London and one at half service – he played almost 1000 minutes less than Vlahovic – due to continuous physical problems. It is understood that inserting him in a team with a history of injuries bordering on the tragic like Juventus is a decidedly high risk. Not supported by an adequate physical and athletic condition, Lukaku risks becoming harmful on the pitch, as happened in the first two thirds of the season with the Nerazzurri and also in the World Cup, when he seemed like a shadow of the player he admired two seasons earlier.
I don’t want the images to be a disparaging tool against Romelu Lukaku as a player, but reality must be considered, and what we have seen in the last 2 matches must be attached to the numbers. In just over 90′ total, against Monza and Napoli: there are 13 turnovers..pic.twitter.com/ioUi4Oo7vM
— Paride Pasta (@paride_pasta) January 8, 2023
A non-optimal tactical context
As far as offensive schemes are concerned, Conte and Allegri work in diametrically opposite ways. This is demonstrated by the way in which the two used their points in black and white. In this case, the best anti-sponsor of the Vlahovic-Lukaku move is called Fernando llorente, excellent under the guidance of Antonio Conte, purged up to the termination with Allegri. Llorente, like Lukaku, he has never been a self-sufficient striker and benefited greatly from the support of his teammates around him, whether they were midfielders or second strikers. With Conte, Llorente and Tevez they played close like Lukaku and Lautaro, exchanging ball in the strait, opening up spaces for each other and complementing each other perfectly, like the old couples of the 90s formed by the tall and physically strong forward and the small, technical and darting one.
In his experiences with Juventus, Allegri has always kept the two forwards away, asking them to cover a lot of the field and to be self-sufficient, a move that exalted Tevez’s inspiration and tremendism but nullified Llorente’s contribution, left too alone and exhausted in a job of incessant short-long which, unlike theApache, could not own. Not even Lukaku could support this task for an entire championship.
The last factor of concern, closely related to the previous one, is the absence of an attacking partner that can enhance the characteristics of Lukaku as done by Lautaro Martinez in nerazzurro. Church he is only a nominal second striker, as he is more inclined to look for the ball on the wing than to receive it in the centre. Owned by, despite having an excellent basic technique, is a 9 to all intents and purposes and even in the national team he does not beat the same areas of the pitch as Lewandowski. In the end, Kean he is the least associative of the three and perhaps the most adaptable to act as Lukaku’s “squire”, but we are in the field of hypotheses and it must be said that he is a player who has never been considered a regular at Juventus.
Will it really be Juve’s new attacking duo?
Putting the situations on the pitch in black and white, those intangible factors must still be considered – of which Max Allegri is a priest – which in recent years have guided Juve’s choices and which may prove to be the real tip of the balance in this exchange. Compared to Vlahovic, Lukaku is 7 years older but also with a truly enormous wealth of experience: he is the best scorer in the history of the Belgian national team and he is an established player, one of those that Allegri likes. Lukaku knows how to win because he’s done it before; he has many matches behind him and a solid curriculum, between Chelsea, United and Inter, with a personal history that would allow him to feel less “the weight of the shirt” and to manage better “hot balloons”. Nothing matters more than these soft skills in Allegri’s philosophy, king of moment management and the ability to slip into the folds of matches to bring them home without dominating them.
Quite simply, in all likelihood Massimiliano Allegri thinks Juventus have a better chance of winning the Scudetto with Lukaku up front than with Vlahovic. The shipwreck of the technical project linked to the Serbian (for which Dybala had been sacrificed), as well as the doubts about Lukaku’s tactical adaptability, physical integrity and probable unsaleability, will become irrelevant if Juve win the championship. Lukaku is Juventus’ definitive all-in, the very embodiment of the concept of instant team. The risk of weighing down Juventus’ accounts for over three years and losing one of the most talented forwards of recent years is well worth a bet for Max: after all, isn’t winning the only thing that matters to him?