The task before Juventus was simple. Win Sunday’s game against Salernitana, and a long-talked-about spot in the Champions League was theirs.
It was the perfect setup to confirm a spot in Europe’s premier competition — a spot that at the end of January had seemed like a foregone conclusion but that since then had become less and less certain as Juve’s season descended into it’s three-month-long tailspin. Coming into the match, Salernitana hadn’t won a game in the 2024 calendar year. They’d had twice as many coaches as they had wins over the course of the season, and had been confirmed for relegation for two weeks. Juventus played them in back-to-back games in January, and while they had somehow allowed them to score first in both of those matches, they had come back each time, first flattening the Granata 6-1 in the Coppa Italia, then pushing past them 2-1 on a late winner in the league days later.
But in the three months since Juve’s successful January, nothing has gone the way it ought to have been. And on Sunday, Juventus reached a new low, completely embarrassing themselves on their home field, getting thoroughly outplayed and requiring a stoppage time goal from Adrien Rabiot just to pick up a single point in a 1-1 draw against a team that is a serious contender for the worst to compete in Serie A in this century.
All the worst aspects of the last three months came to roost. Passing that was either sterile or awful. Finishing that was either shoddy or terribly unlucky. Mental lapses on defense that conceded a completely avoidable goal. Juventus had produced some hope that they might be turning a late corner in their last two games, but by the end of the game had thoroughly nuked that hope, and ultimately only clinched a spot in next year’s Champions League because Atalanta beat Roma later on in the night, putting them out of reach of the Giallorossi.