The situation for Juventus was very simple on Sunday afternoon: You win and you enter the final week of the 2025-26 season with your Champions League fate completely in your hands.
After the 2-0 loss to Fiorentina, that same Champions League fate is now completely out of Juve’s hands.
The result of it and the rest of Sunday afternoon’s means that Spalletti’s squad has dropped from third place and in control of their Champions League qualification hopes to now falling all the way down to sixth place and needing a whole lot of help on the final weekend of the season on top of Juve beating Torino in the Derby della Mole.
It was the kind of afternoon that had Spalletti understandably heated after the final whistle.
“We had to play football today, keeping a high level of quality and personality. First of all, I have to question myself rather than the footballers. As I told them today, if this is what my team offers, I must assess mostly what I’ve done, before analysing what they’ve done.
“The performance was dreadful in many aspects. Sometimes we were not lucky as well. We went 1-0 down despite not conceding much. We didn’t start well; we didn’t win many duels, and we didn’t fuel the atmosphere in the stadium.”
(Source: Football Italia)
Juventus fell behind 12 minutes before halftime on Cher Ndour’s goal — another instance of Juventus allowing the opponent to score on their first shot of the game. It was the 16th time in Serie A this season it was one of those instances and put Juve on the back foot in a game in which they were already struggling against Fiorentina.
“I must make sure it doesn’t happen anymore. I must talk about this and something else: creating tranquillity in the players’ minds, allowing them to make decisions, find the right space, play aggressively and play tidy balls,” Spalletti noted.
“These are things that bring the stadium by your side. On the other hand, we didn’t do much regarding what was needed.”
Facing a suddenly massive uphill — and probably impossible — battle to get into the top four on the final week of the season, Juventus need to beat Torino in the Derby della Mole and hope that one of Roma (against Hellas Verona) or AC Milan (against Cagliari) drop points.
Of course, all of this will be a moot point if Juventus don’t beat Torino and play anywhere close to how they did against Fiorentina.
If Juventus finish outside of the top four, it will be the first time that they will not be in the Champions League since the Allianz Stadium opened its doors in 2011. (There is, of course, Max Allegri’s last season without European football, but that was decided by the FIGC and not on the actual field of play.)
Plus, no Champions League will also mean a massive financial hit to a club that has spent a whole lot of money the last couple of years under multiple front office leaders.
“We know that the lack of Champions League affects the team financially, but talking about life and death and talking war is wrong. This is just a football game.
“The footballers must be tidy, the playing style remains, and this is what has brought us here.”
[…]
“I have clear ideas about my footballers and me, I’ve known myself for 68 years, and I’ve always travelled by myself.
“I must, first of all, analyse myself. Did I do everything to bring them into the appropriate mental condition? It’s mostly about the head. I must talk to myself, first of all.”
Spalletti, who signed a two-year contract extension last month, said he will be meeting with Juve majority owner John Elkann to discuss and “present something more” about the state of the squad. That should be a rather interesting conversation seeing Juve will almost certainly miss the Champions League and all of the financial impact that comes with it.
“This week I’ll speak with John Elkann, but it will be a personal analysis; I have to present something more than what I presented today.”
[…]
“The managers were all in the locker room, we were with the players. I give a very positive assessment of Juventus’ season: they played a great season, I’m talking about my time there, where some incidents penalized us from making it great.
We weren’t good at directing incidents that were within our reach to make it great. We played great football (this season), made significant progress. My opinion remains that of Juventus and the Juventus players.”
