In the 63rd minute of Sunday night’s third place vs. fourth place showdown in Turin, the camera showed a shot of the [Juventus](https://www.blackwhitereadallover.com) bench. The scoreboard read 2-0 in favor of Atalanta, and the reaction of those players certainly showed it, with the usually jovial and energetic Carlo Pinsoglio essentially slumped in his seat on the bench.
His expression was shared amongst those at Allianz Stadium and elsewhere.
Juventus didn’t just lose against Atalanta in front of the hometown crowd in Turin. They got absolutely pummeled by an Atalanta side that did just about everything right when Juventus struggled to do much of anything correctly. Yes, even the basics seemed like a totally foreign concept on this night, with Atalanta making Juventus pay over and over again for their mistakes during the 4-0 defeat of Thiago Motta’s squad at the Allianz.
As the curva sang about how laughable Juve’s effort was against La Dea, it was hard to disagree with them. This was a horrid performance on your home field, and the final nail in the coffin of any sort of lingering Scudetto hopes. No mistake about it. That kind of thinking, no matter the extent of which you dared to go there, is in more.
Don’t do it again because it will probably end up just like this performance was from Juventus — and that is nothing good ... at all.
All of this is because Juventus suffered a 4-0 defeat at home for the firs time since 1967. Seriously. That is nearly six full decades without this kind of humiliation in front of their home crowd — and something that very few people who visit this space of the internet have ever since over the course of their lifetime.
It was a shocker. There is no other way to say it. Even with all of Juventus’ inconsistencies across this 2024-25 season, these kinds of performances have been rare. The five-game winning streak in Serie A allowed Juve to both move into fourth place on their own and get within six points of the league lead. But once Atalanta took the lead midway through the first half after the ball struck Weston McKennie’s arm and Mateo Retegui converted the ensuing penalty kick, it all went downhill fast.
Like really, really fast.
If not for Michele Di Gregorio, it would have been 2-0 or 3-0 going into the half. Yet that notion was basically voided out when Atalanta actually took a 2-0 lead less than a minute into the second half. On a rainy night in Turin, the snowball only started to roll and increase in speed as things went on, with Juventus having absolutely no answer whatsoever.
Juventus deserved every bit of this dismantling they got. Even with Juve having a 63-37 edge in possession, this is what the final offensive looked like beyond just the goals:
* Atalanta shots: 19
* Juventus shots: 9
* Atalanta xG: 3.75
* Juventus xG; 0.70.
Juventus finished with just two shots on goal, and both of those came in the dying minutes once there was probably about a third of the crowd left and it was so quiet that you might have even had flashbacks to pandemic times when the Allianz was completely empty and Pinsoglio’s voice could be heard loud and clear over the course of 90 minutes.
This time, though, there was nothing to be happy about. Not a damn thing. Instead, this was Juventus getting absolutely rocked by a team that had two wins in their last nine games in all competitions and struggled to score against the 19th-place team in the Serie A table one week earlier.
As we head into the second week of March, this Juventus team is still struggling to give us any sort of idea what kind of identity they have. Or maybe this is just what they are under Thiago Motta — and that is not a good sign considering all the hits they’ve taken over the course of the last couple of months.
* In less than a month, Juventus have gotten bounced from the Champions League, ousted from the Coppa Italia by one of the worst teams in Serie A and now suffered the kind of loss on their home field they haven’t seen in nearly 60 years.
* And you’re telling me this is the same Juventus team that beat the current league leaders a little less than a month ago? Sheesh, I don’t even know where to begin.
* I guess it’s rather fitting that, with the season they’ve had so far, this is the way that Juve officially get eliminated from the Scudetto race. Go big or go home, right? Or something like that.
* The only Juventus player who had a good game was Michele Di Gregorio and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
* I don’t even want to imagine what this final score would have been if Di Gregorio didn’t make a few of those big saves that he did late in the first half. Why? Because Atalanta showed absolutely no respite at all. They were out for blood even when it was 4-0 in the 85th minute. They wanted to inflict pain and just continue to hammer Juve no matter what.
* Just so many mistakes led to the goals Atalanta scored, but that pass from Lloyd Kelly on what soon made it 3-0 might have been the worst of the bunch. I know Kelly has been a bit of a punching bag since he arrived at Juventus, but to try the difficult pass when you’ve got the simple options at the same time just didn’t make any sort of sense. And Juve got what they deserved because of it.
* So does Dusan Vlahovic get credit for a key pass on Atalanta’s fourth goal? I mean, that was a nice ball into open space and Ademola Lookman took advantage of it.
* This was about as quiet of a game from Kenan Yildiz as we’ve gotten all season. Guess the worries about him being sick were on point because he didn’t offer much of anything before being subbed off at the half.
* At what point will Motta stop with playing Yildiz on the right and Nico Gonzalez on the left? As much as Yildiz is meant to play more centrally, at least he gets to cut in from the left wing and look much more comfortable doing so. Plus you get Gonzalez playing on his better wing as well. Just confusing, man.
* A sign of how bad Juve were in the final third: Samuel Mbangula led the team in key passes. He entered the game in the 53rd minute. No Juve starter had more than one key pass — which is not great no matter what the other team is doing.
* Some very loud boos for a certain Johnny Square the first time he was on the ball. Guessing that had to do with the team he played for last season compared to who he plays for now.
* And those boos and whistles only continued to get louder and louder as the first half went on.
* Who knew that an hour or so later those boos would be directed toward the Juve players rather than an ex. Or at least some of them considering a lot of those same folks in the crowd cleared out well before the final whistle sounded.
* When it rains, it pours. Or something along those lines since Juve got blown out and the weather was bad at the Allianz. Fitting, ain’t it?
* To quote a man named Anthony Soprano [when he’s playing Monopoly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ktF-y-hPU&ab_channel=TonySoprano) and is about to get smoked by his brother in law Bobby Bacala, “I got nothin’ to say.”
* Bourbon, please. Make it a double. Or maybe a quadruple considering Juve just got poker’d on their home turf. That would be appropriate, wouldn’t it? Either way, just leave the bottle.