Over the last three Februarys, we have seen three different Juventus managers see growing positive feelings about their squad suddenly go up in smoke. Remember the talk about a potential Scudetto run at the midway point of the 2023-24 season? Nope, that didn’t happen. Maybe Motta Ball finally starting to take shape? Oops, that didn’t happen, either.
And this most recent edition of February that we are currently in the final stages of? Yeah, it ain’t close to being anything resembling “good” no matter if you compare it to the previous two or just have it stand on its own.
Juventus are set to play their final fixture of February 2026 on Wednesday night, a Champions League tie that doesn’t have very much hope at all attached to it because of what happened in the first leg last week in Turkiye. That was followed up by a completely forgettable and rather limp performance in a 2-0 loss to Como this past Saturday — which, combined with Roma’s win on Sunday, saw the gap between fourth place and Juve in fifth be extended to four points ahead of the weekend trip to the Stadio Olimpico.
See? The month of February stinks.
Not so long ago you felt like it was the time in the season when Juve put the hammer down and truly flexed their muscle. But now, it’s become obvious that this is the time in the season in which things begin to fall apart. Mainly because we’ve seen it happen three years in a row.
Before we try and identify the “Why?” of it all, just how bad have these last three Februarys been? Let’s look …
- February 2024 under Max Allegri: Four games played in Serie A (remember, no Champions League), with one win, two losses and one draw. Grand total of four points earned domestically, with the first matchday of the month being a Derby d’Italia loss that came after a draw to Empoli and began the slide.
- February 2025 under Thiago Motta: Seven games played in all competitions, with five wins (!!), one loss and one draw. Grand total of 12 points earned domestically, but Juve were ousted from the Champions League by PSV Eindhoven and the Coppa Italia by soon-to-be relegated Empoli.
- February 2026 under Luciano Spalletti (with one game to play): Six games played in all competitions, with one win, four losses and one draw. Juve lost the first leg of their Champions League play-off tie to Galatasaray and were bounced from the Coppa Italia by Atalanta.
Those are the simple facts of how February has gone for Juventus under Allegri, Motta and now Spalletti, with two of the last three seasons resulting in in-season managerial changes because of those struggles. (And lest we forget that Allegri was dismissed after the Coppa Italia final, too, so it’s not like he was totally unharmed by a bad February during his final year at Juve.)
When things in a certain month were best under Thiago Motta over the course of the last three seasons, that doesn’t necessarily say anything that is all that good to begin with. And that team is one that won five times in one month amidst a 10-month Motta tenure that was filled with draws? My goodness.
So, after this … why? Why is this happening again?
There is no one singular answer to this. You can’t point and say that the manager is bad because I feel safe in saying that at least two of those three men mentioned above are good managers. Allegri and Spalletti are two of the most experienced managers in Serie A right now. They have won titles — and a lot of them when you combine their two résumés. (Although, as we know, one of those guys has many more Serie A titles and trophies than the other.)
And you can’t just point at the general squad because there is not a ton of overlap between the squad that Allegri had to the one that Spalletti has, mainly because of all the roster churn that happened to accommodate the manager in the middle of this three-year run of terrible Februarys. Plus, all of these squads have been flawed and that is something we’ve known well before things started going south.
But when thinking about this, I keep coming back the overall state of the squad as a whole and the things that come with it.
The first is the overall squad construction that multiple front offices have tried to put together to not very good effect. Cristiano Giuntoli tried and failed to put together a good squad and ultimately it cost both Motta and then himself their jobs in Turin within the span of a few months. Damien Comolli, not exactly a sporting director by trade, was the one leading the sporting area this past summer and it’s not like the players he brought in have proven to be those who are changing things all that much for the better.
And as a direct result of that poor roster construction by multiple sporting chiefs now, Juventus’ depth — or lack of it — has been completely exposed this season. Under Allegri in 2023-24, they were only playing in Serie A, so having a huge amount of depth was as much of a pressing issue as it has been the last two seasons.
With that lack of depth, things have been completely exposed. Spalletti has basically been relying on the same starting XI for weeks now, if not longer than that. Giuntoli had to scramble in the January transfer window in 2025 to bring in depth in defense because of injuries and the unambiguous dismissal of former captain Danilo. This current team just suddenly feels like it’s running on fumes even more than last season’s did when it saw Motta playing — and relying on — players who weren’t even on the roster until January to try and stabilize the Bremer-less defense.
Juventus made two signings during the winter transfer window last month. One was a much-needed backup to Kenan Yildiz, the other was a much-needed backup for Pierre Kalulu — two of the Juve players who have logged the most amount of minutes this season. One is already injured and the other, Jérémie Boga, has looked solid in the small amount of minutes he’s played since his move from Nice.
On the whole, though, this squad that has holes all over the place just doesn’t have the depth to compete on multiple fronts — especially at a point in the season when somebody like Kalulu has played nearly 3,200 minutes and Yildiz is closing in on 3,000 minutes with a few more starts and potential full 90s.
It’s all added up to a February in which Juve’s European campaign is on the brink in the Champions League play-off round for the second straight season. They’re already out of the Coppa Italia, too. The race for the top four looks even more complicated than it did a year ago when Motta was fired and replaced by Igor Tudor.
It’s not looking good, folks.
There is no one reason why the last three Februarys for Juventus have been season-altering ones. But the fact still remains that they have resulted in the last two-plus months of the season being very different than what we thought it could be when the final week of January was taking shape.