Juventus 1 - Genoa 3: Initial reaction and random observations

When you’re working on about two hours of sleep, sometimes it feels like you’re seeing things that might not exactly be true. Unfortunately, Juventus’ dumpster fire-like showing at the Marassi was all too real.

You wanted an improvement over how this team is playing over the last few weeks and months? That’s going to have to wait another day. Juventus not only lost to Genoa at the Luigi Ferraris, but they did so in emphatic and humiliating fashion, going down 3-0 within the first half-hour and looking absolutely terrible in the process. The attack was non-existent, the midfield was a bucket full of turnovers and the defense provided as much organization as an Under-10 team that just started practicing together yesterday as Giovanni Simeone and Co. ran circles around them.

It was awful. Simply, simply awful.

Can you believe some dopes actually woke up before six in the morning to watch that game, too?

/looks at self/

Oh, that’s right.

Where to begin? Well, I don’t really know. For weeks we’ve been saying how Juventus aren’t living up to their potential and getting results despite it. First in Serie A, first in the Champions League group, so that’s all good and great. But when you look at the overall quality of how this team is playing, it’s nowhere near what it could be. Sure, there have been injuries all over the place, but this team still has talent, but just hasn’t been living up to it.

It all came to fruition against Genoa, with Juventus playing about as bad as they could while Genoa steamrolled them en route to a 3-0 lead within the first 30 minutes. Simeone scored not once but twice, then Alex Sandro’s own goal capped off what was pretty much the icing on the cake of the Serie A leaders looking more like relegation battlers.

Performance-wise, maybe this has been coming for a while. Performance-wise, Juventus certainly got what it deserved on Sunday afternoon at the Marassi.

Sounds about right. Too bad there were no discounts on merchandise to come along with it. Or maybe that’s a good thing so that we don’t waste our money on things we are going to leave in the back of our closets for the next two or three months.

Last season the embarrassment in the rain against Sassuolo proved to be the reality check and rock bottom moment where things were suddenly changed in the resulting weeks and months. You just hope that this result, one of Juventus’ worst showings in years, truly becomes a moment like the Sassuolo loss was last season. Something needs to change — and it’s needed awfully quick, too.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

• You wanna know which players played well in the second half? There was just one — Gigi Buffon. He nearly made four saves in the span of 10 seconds before Simeone opened the scoring.
• In case you were thinking that the first-half performance wasn’t bad enough, there’s the fact that Leonardo Bonucci had to be subbed off with a hamstring injury. So, if you were hoping that Juve made it through one game without somebody getting hurt, then you’re probably going to need to play some FIFA17 later today or something.
• Juventus had one shot on target in the first half. One. That’s it.
• Can people stop talking about Dani Alves like he’s the same player he was at Barcelona and that Juve are so lucky to have him? That Dani Alves hasn’t been around Turin much this season.
• You have a player in Daniele Rugani who plays really well against Sevilla earlier in the week and you choose to start him on the bench with Alves instead being preferred as a center back? I don’t get Max Allegri’s thought process sometimes.
• Juventus finally showed up down 3-0 with about seven or eight minutes to go. That sums things up pretty well, doesn’t it?
• Miralem Pjanic scored a pretty nice free kick and absolutely nobody is going to remember that he actually did because of how Juventus played.
• I really don’t know what else to say because that was truly awful.
• Okay, one last thing: There is nearly a week before Juventus faces Atalanta. For the love of all that is holy, laying an egg against a team that is actually sitting toward the top of the table is going to be just another sign that this team needs seriously fixing.