TURIN, ITALY – SEPTEMBER 16: Igor Tudor, Head Coach of Juventus, looks on prior to the UEFA Champions League 2025/26 League Phase MD1 match between Juventus and Borussia Dortmund at Juventus Stadium on September 16, 2025 in Turin, Italy. (Photo by Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images)
Getty Images
And there goes another one.
Less than 24 hours after the 1-0 defeat to Lazio at the Stadio Olimpico, Igor Tudor fell on his sword.
Yet another sacking, yet another Juventus coach paying the price for the lack of vision up above. Tudor becomes the fifth Juve manager to be sacked in the last half decade, not since the end of Max Allegri’s first stint as manager came to an end in the summer of 2019 has a manager left of their own accord.
In truth, Tudor’s sacking had been coming.
The Croat always seemed like a stop-gap option, the caretaker tag stuck to him throughout his seven months in charge. The only reason he remained in the job in the summer was the lack of a better alternative and coaches like Antonio Conte staying put at Napoli and Gian Piero Gasperini refusing the position.
The former Juve defender, who served the club with class in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was viewed as a transition manager, likely until next summer when a bigger fish could be hooked in.
In the end, Tudor didn’t even make it to Christmas.
While he doesn’t deserve to be blamed entirely for Juve’s current plight, Tudor did make some head-scratching decisions.
His persistence in forging ahead with a 3-4-2-1 system, even when it was clear that 1. It wasn’t working and 2. It didn’t serve the players at his disposal, almost felt like a case of self-sabotage, or at worst stubbornness for the sake of it.
The constant chopping and changing of personnel in attack, with Juve not having scored a goal for more than 360 minutes of football, tells its own story. Tudor had Dusan Vlahoic, Lois Openda and Jonathan David to pick from, and by the end of his reign none of them looked confident in front of goal.
The late summer signings of Openda and Edon Zhegrova only added to the confusion, as Tudor had reportedly asked for a couple of midfielders.
The balance of the squad was too attack-heavy, the lack of genuine centre backs frighteningly low for a team playing in three competitions. Moreover, the injury to Gleison Bremer means the next manager either needs to shift to a back two, or pray none of Daniele Rugani. Lloyd Kelly or Pierre Kalulu gets injured before January.
Tudor’s constant criticism of referees and barbs about the lack of synergy between himself and the board as relates to transfers didn’t exactly endear himself to those in Turin.
Tudor was too direct, perhaps a bit too honest, in pre and post-game interviews and this can be ignored when winning games. But when you don’t, and Juve haven’t won since September 13th, those words can come back to haunt you.
Yet all things being equal, getting rid of Tudor isn’t the end of the problem. Like Thiago Motta, Andrea Pirlo, Maurizio Sarri and Allegri before him, the bigger issues are upstairs and the lack of clarity.
The club is still without a sporting director following Cristiano Giuntoli’s sacking in the summer. Damien Comolli has arrived, while club legend Giorgio Chiellini is getting more of a say, but the former defender is still inexperienced at boardroom level and is still learning the ropes.
Another legend — the Juventus legend — Alex Del Piero, spoke out about the ongoin problems in the wake of the defeat to Lazio on Sky Sport Italia.
“Juventus doesn’t have a coaching problem, but a more complex one: the team isn’t cohesive. We still don’t have a starting 11 because many players are struggling to perform consistently.
“Even with another manager in place of Tudor, Juve aren’t a Scudetto contender.”
Parallels have been drawn between Juve and Manchester United, two dynasties in their respective countries, two European heavyweights who are both being run supremely badly.
Like United, Juve have wasted hundreds of millions on talent who don’t perform. Juve have spent close to $300 million in the last couple of transfer windows, and none of the bigger purchases have been a roaring success.
In fact, the higher the price, the less successful they’ve been: Vlahovic, Douglas Luiz, Nico Gonzalez and Teun Koopmeiners have not come close to the kind of form that won them the move to Juve in the first place. Gonzalez and Luiz aren’t even at the club anymore, sold off after just a year.
What is more galling is that youth products have been cast aside at the earliest possibility in order to fund the big signings, with the likes of Matias Soule and Dean Huijsen now stars at their respective clubs. Players like Alberto Costa, who was signed last January and showed remarkable potential, is now fulfilling it at Porto.
There is a sense of an Italian institution floating in the ether; not quite knowing which direction to take in the aftermath of their domestic supremacy ending in 2021. The long list of costly mistakes, starting with the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018, has led the club to its current status.
“There’s no long-term vision,” said Sky Sport commentator Fabio Caressa. ”Was Juventus built for fourth place?
“Is it acceptable that it was built for fourth place? Are you satisfied just to go to Madrid and not get thrashed? If you’re Juventus, you play to win — you can’t think about building a team only for fourth place.”
The current iteration of The Old Lady is no better than a fourth-placed finish: a complete mishmash of a squad with weaknesses in defence and midfield.
Sacking Tudor was perhaps necessary, but that doesn’t end Juve’s problems. They were and are much bigger than the former defender who answered the club’s call back in March.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Without a proper hierarchy in place, things will continue as is for The Old Lady, a club continually bundling along, continually figuring out what it wants to be.