Maurizio Sarri and Juventus don’t seem like a good fit. Sarri wants style while Juventus demands results. But when Napoli almost dethroned Juventus in the 2017/18 season, Andrea Agnelli was convinced that you could have both and chose Sarri to lead them into a new era. Even though his method takes time, Sarri has to pressure-cook the transformation. For the first time in his career, he needs to deliver at least one championship. 

What is Sarri-ball?

Arrigo Sacchi calls Sarri’s tactics revolutionary. Sarri-ball even makes it to Wikipedia. It is “vertical tiki-taka”, combining short progressive passes with multiple elementary moves: 

• Positional exchange

• Decoy run

• Third man

A ball receiver usually plays as the third-man for a backward pass. This set-up promotes the vertical ball’s progression. It can also restart the attack even if the opponent’s defense doesn’t break down. 

Sarri also uses a lot of creative plays:

• Decoy pass

A lot of these passes are played in knee-jerk fashion. They look unnecessary, but each pass produces a start-and-stop pulse, making it difficult for the opponent’s defenders to synchronize their movements. 

• Unmasking passing lane

Sarri is a master of illusions, moving players around to reveal hidden passing lanes.  

Many coaches keen on possession-based soccer rely on some of these same routines. What makes Sarri unique is not how he uses them to create space, but how he defines space. 

Pep Guardiola creates space by using passing to manipulate and move the opponent’s defenders. Sarri takes this concept to an extreme. To him, space is not absolute but relative. Advantages are not spatial but also mental: The area a defender can cover depends on their anticipation and body orientation. Attention is limited. The ball and the attacking player are the most relevant objects. Move them enough, and you can eat up the defender’s focus. 

You don’t need a lot of room. You only need to disorient the defenders enough, by quick and repeating passes and moves, to find the necessary window:

The power of disorientation expands exponentially the more you run these plays. 

You only need to break one defensive line or structure each time, because the immediate defenders will scramble to cover the break and leave someone else open:

Putting an attacking player just below a defender line can afford them time and room to gauge how the next set of defenders respond after they receive the ball. 

Sarri is stubborn. He attacks the same way whoever he is up against, often trying relentlessly to break a jammed defense. Intentionally or not, his reasoning has a scientific basis, tracing back to our innate ability to track relevant and moving objects. If playing that way works, why change it? 

Watch how Juventus play closely, you will find all these individual elements. What Sarri needs now is a workable game model to combine them.

A Mix of Sarri and Allegri

Sarri’s unshakable belief in his tactics, the roster limitations, and the pressure to deliver results create a 4312 with a lot of Massimiliano Allegri’s influence. 

Sarri doesn’t have a secure deep-lying playmaker like Jorginho. Miralem Pjanic is a master passer with a different style: 

Although he is already elite in ball security, Pjanic isn’t at the same level as Jorginho or legends like Daniel De Rossi and Andrea Pirlo. When you play so many passes, even a slight increase in the turnover rate becomes detrimental. 

Jorginho’s ability to carry is also vital to open the opponent’s defense. You can give him the ball deep in your half, knowing that he won’t lose it. He becomes a bait to attract pressure, creating space for his teammates, something Pjanic can’t do. 

Sarri’s Napoli also paired Jorginho with a ball-carrying center-back like Kalidou Koulibaly. This combo gave the opponent a dilemma: If you pressed them, either one of them would break through; If you didn’t, Napoli would pin you down in your half. 

No one in Juventus can carry and dribble as well as Koulibaly does, but they have Leonardo Bonucci:

He has a wide passing range. He can make dangerous progressive passes from anywhere. The two aggressive passers effect how Sarri wants Juventus to build up from the back: 

The interaction between Bonucci and Pjanic is slower and less direct than that of Koulibaly and Jorginho. Instead of baiting the opponent, Juventus use circulation between the flanks to find an opening in the middle. 

Bonucci’s passing range works well with the 4312 when combining with the moves that can open even a narrow passing lane:

Juventus often have three attacking players in the center. With the qualities of their attackers, you want to give them the ball as soon as possible. The interactions between Cristiano Ronaldo, Gonzalo Higuain, and Paulo Dybala are especially dangerous. All of them can score from outside the box. 

Even without Jorginho, Napoli under Sarri could advance the ball through Marek Hamsik, Lorenzo Insigne, and the left-back on the flank:

Juventus can’t do the same; Blaise Matuidi is especially a liability in passing. He also rarely gets past the defender. By WOWY, Matuidi’s participation in a possession only increases its Expected Goal (xG) by 36%, the bottom 25% in Serie A among qualified central midfielders since 2014/15. His buddy Alex Sandro isn’t so much better.

They don’t make progressive passes to the center: 

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The ball becomes increasingly close to the sideline then goes back to the center-back. There are few elaborate pass sequences. 

But sometimes you just find room on the flank, and you have to attack it. Allegri’s special is useful here:

It’s a standard 433 move: a positional exchange between the forward and the sided central midfielder on the flank. It’s dull, but sometimes it does work:

Over the years, Allegri had molded Juventus into an extremist, encouraging risky passes:

The x-axis shows 10 Expected Pass classes by difficulty (think of it as Expected Goal for passes, 0.1 is the hardest, and 1 is the easiest). The y-axis shows the normalized Z-score for each Expected Pass class.  For example, Napoli in 2017/18 played only the easier passes (Expected Pass classes = 0.8 – 1.0) but very not anything else while Juventus in 2017/18 played only the easiest passes (Expected Pass classes = 1.0) or the difficult passes (Expected Pass classes = 0.1 – 0.3).

Sarri has a polar opposite philosophy; he doesn’t want risks. He only uses short and easy passes and avoids any difficult ones. 

Considering the limited amount of time Sarri has, the make-over in the offense is relatively successful: Juventus create about 1.8 Expected Goal per game, higher than any Juventus since 2014/15. It shouldn’t be the final product, considering how many areas Juventus can improve. For one, Juventus need to pass the ball quicker.

Without tracking data, we can’t measure the actual pass speed. We can approximate it by calculating the average amount of time per pass in all open-play possessions: Juventus need 2.6 seconds per pass, the fastest since 2014/15, but ~12% slower than Napoli used to do under Sarri. 

Players like Bonucci always look to make multiple lines–breaking passes, but most of the time, the passing lane doesn’t exist. Instead, these passes slow down the speed of the passing: The passer needs time to survey the opponent’s defense. He also needs a wide kicking angle and running steps to hit the ball with enough power. 

Being an essential part of Sarri-ball, Juventus’ players need to make quick passing as a habit. 

Transforming the defense

Unlike traditional Italian coaches, Sarri wants to pin down the opponent deep in their half with pressing. Juventus’ PPDA this season is 22.3, top 5 % since 2014/15, around the same level Napoli did under Sarri.

Sarri wants to direct the ball to the flank area so that this player can tackle the ball handler:

Juventus press in a 4312 diamond this year: 

The two forwards divide the pitch into three thirds horizontally. The four midfielders support the first line in a narrow diamond, securing the central area while retaining assess to the flank. In contrast, Napoli under Sarri pressed in various shapes: 

They could close down the ball handler immediately because they were so athletic, especially with players like Dries Mertens, Jose Callejon, or Hamsik. Their running triggered the covering, creating a defensive trap. It also comes with a cover shadow, cutting off the immediate passing lane and forcing the opponent to hit an aimless long ball into Napoli’s territory. 

Sarri settles on the 4312 this season because Juventus’ front line lacks pressure; Ronaldo has rarely shown interest in the defense. Higuain isn’t athletic enough to replicate Mertens. To direct the ball to the wide-area where they can attack, the 1-2 up top has to protect the center. 

Even against a back-three, Juventus rarely use the 1-2 in the first line to match up with the opponent’s three central defenders: 

The two forwards will take two of the center-backs while a sided central midfielder, usually Matuidi, will move up to close down the last central defender. No matter how the opponent builds up, the 1-2 block is unmovable, blocking the access to the center and compensating for the lack of pressure from the front line.

Matuidi selfless running also explains why he is chosen over Adrien Rabiot. Ronaldo is in the bottom one percentile in pressures and pressure regains, according to Statsbomb. Sarri wants Matuidi to make up what Ronaldo doesn’t do. The Frenchman may not have the finesse to play Sarri-ball, but he provides critical balance to the team. 

The diamond press is Sarri’s compromise, a sign of his flexibility to accommodate his players’ characteristics. But a compromise can’t eliminate weaknesses; the sided central midfielder is the primary ball attacker. Even in the narrow diamond, he has to stay wide enough to access the flank. Gennaro Gattuso took full advantage of that behavior to break Juventus’ press with the timely backward run from his midfielders last weekend. 

Sarri’s approach is risky, and Juventus haven’t been defending well; they concede ~1.16 xG per game, only better than ~75% of the teams since 2014/15. Allegri’s Juventus never concede more than 0.95 xG per game in any season. The decline in the defense likely comes down to the tactics, not the player’s quality. From open-plays, they concede 1 xG every 42 possessions this year, as opposed to 60 possessions last year. At the same time, their defensive performances in set-pieces remain largely the same (1 xG per 130 possessions in the previous two seasons). If the player’s quality underlines their defensive decline, their performance in the open play and set-pieces should see similar decreases. 

Losing Chiellini is tough. Sarri has to fast-track Matthijs de Ligt’s progress when he should have been given more room to adapt. He openly admitted his struggle in defending in a zone. The ultra-high defensive line doesn’t help:

Juventus also can’t sit deep. They are too passive. Their medium or low block applies no pressure to the opponent:

It merely shifts with the ball. Their opponent has too much time and freedom on the ball to find a break.

The defense needs a lot of work, and there is not much time left. 

Losing Game Control

Sarri needs to accelerate his transformation of Juventus. We have seen all the elements, but not a coherent product of Sarri-ball. The individual parts don’t work with each other. Juventus can play great for an extended period but suddenly lose control of the game. The devil is in the transition. 

Their counter-pressing had leaked like a sieve until lately:

Because the attackers don’t attack the lost ball, 

the central midfielder or the full-back has to carry the load:

Their tackle usually fails because they are too far away from where the possession is lost. The opponent has already controlled the ball by the time they arrive. Worse, when they move up, the backline is exposed. 

Even many of the lost possessions may not turn into successful counter-attacks, but these back-and-forths prevent you from controlling the game. You have to scramble back to the defense, and the game dynamic works against you. Too many possessions are initiated from the area far away from the opponent’s goal. Your offense is likely to suffer.  

There could be many reasons why Juventus’ attacking players give up on the lost ball. Usually, you see a lot of sighing or hand-waving:

Sometimes they are upset that an attacking move doesn’t work out. But that frustration also shows that many players haven’t understood or believed in the new approach. The attack doesn’t end when you lose the ball, it only ends when the referee blows the whistle. If you keep working at it, you will get the chance:

Juventus also need work on the opposite end too. Far too often they prioritize counter-attacking with a long ball than regaining the possession:

Juventus have so much quality up-front that a quick transition is always tempting. But if you have been suffering a lot of pressure, relying on last-minute heroics to stay afloat, the team won’t be in a coherent structure. The counter-attack may not be such a good idea. Instead, you want to reorganize. Juventus’ players still just haven’t been programmed to do so:

This is an issue of game control, a judgment of risk-and-reward; The quick transition becomes dangerous when it comes back. Even if the opponent fails to make a shot, you run into the back-and-forth situation—just like with their counter-pressing failing. Again, you fail to control the game. 

Sarri’s idea of control couldn’t be more different from that of Allegri. The latter doesn’t always care about possession because he uses the defense to control the game. He can afford to take a risk in the transition because it can absorb the pressure when it doesn’t have the ball. Juventus need to move on from that attitude because Sarri needs possession, not the defense, to control the game. These two philosophies can’t be combined. 

And there is a psychological issue; the performance dives when Juventus have taken the lead:

Percentile is normalized by the game state

The players may be scared, or they are arrogant. Or worse, they think that they are good enough to relax, but they are not. Whatever the cause is, Sarri needs to push the pedal to the metal. He has been accommodative, making lots of concessions. But this is February, and it’s not the time for experiments. Everyone needs to buy into the new approach and make a final push.