The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 116: Things get VAR-y interesting vs. Salernitana

Leave it to Italy to take a piece of valuable technology and send it into complete mayhem.

Of course, if you sit in England or Spain, you can probably say the same thing. But in a week in which Juventus saw the most-talented attacking trio in world football today run wild on them for 45 minutes or more, it’s the decisions of a couple of Italian referees who made game-changing decisions in stoppage time Sunday night just when it looked like Juventus had picked up a win over Salernitana.

Fun, ain’t it?

What’s certainly not fun is the fact that Juve had to rely on an Arek Milik goal in stoppage time to beat a Salernitana team that is far from what you would consider ... good.

So while the refereeing mistakes are clearly the headliner, we have another case of Juventus getting down 2-0 — in the first half! — to Salernitana and again playing down to the competition. It was not good. Not good at all. Kinda like the VAR decision at the end of the game.

On this week’s episode of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, we discuss:

• Takeaways from the week that was — including just how bad Serie A refereeing has become, how the heck VAR didn’t have access to the same cameras that broadcasters like Sky Italia and DAZN had, and why VAR hasn’t solved all of the problems we might have thought it would when it first came about.
• Seriously, though ... how the heck did all that get missed against Salernitana?
• But let’s not forget about Juventus’ performance against Salernitana after they fell behind 1-0. It was not good. Then it got worse when it was 2-0 — the kind of deficit Juve hasn’t faced at home against Serie A opposition since 2004. TWO-THOUSAND AND FOUR!
• A question for the crew: What were you doing in 2004?
• How the performance against Salernitana is just another example of how up and down and filled with inconsistencies Juventus’ season to date has been.
• We turn our attention toward the Champions League — both what happened against Paris Saint-Germain and what is to come Wednesday night against Benfica.
• We wrap thins up with a question: Is there any sort of confidence entering Benfica’s visit to Turin that Juve can actually get things done and get their first Champions League win?

You can listen to Episode 116 of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast here:

To our dear listeners: Please look for the latest episode of The Old Lady Speaks to drop every Monday mornings/afternoons (now that Juve are done with Monday night games for a while!) for those of you who live in the United States. (Please adjust your time zone according if you live outside of the U.S.)

If you happen to listen to the Old Lady Speaks on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please feel free to give us a nice rating and review because it is very nice to see that our podcast is being enjoyed by you all. The more you say nice things about us, the more we will continue to love you forever and ever and ever. We promise.

Also, if you haven’t already, please take part in recent our listener survey and let us know what you think of the podcast as a whole. We greatly appreciate the feedback and thank you all for taking part in it.