Following their quarter-finals defeat to Bayern Munich in last year’s Champions League, in which die Roten put four goals past the Bianconeri without a single reply, coach Antonio Conte admitted that his side were in a work in progress and had quite a ways to go in order to catch up to Europe’s elite.
One glaring deficiency was their profligate attack. While Juventus had won the Scudetto back in 2011-2012 without losing a single game—the first Serie A side to do so in the new 38-game format—it was surprising that none of their attackers were among the top in terms of goal output. In fact, their top strikers, Mirko Vucinic and Alessandro Matri each had just 10 goals—and were joint with midfielder Claudio Marchisio. The following season, they again won the Scudetto, but the entire contribution of their four main forwards—Vucinic, Matri, Quagliarella, and Giovinco had just four more league goals than capocannoniere Edinson Cavani’s 29 for Napoli. And it was again a midfielder, Arturo Vidal, who was the leading scorer in the squad with 15 strikes in all competitions.
So naturally, after two seasons, it only made sense for the Bianconeri to attempt to sharpen their attack and after being linked to a whole host of potential suitors, including Gonzalo Higuain, who eventually went to Napoli, they secured the services of ex-Manchester City man Carlos Tevez, with Alessandro Matri being sold to Milan to free up room in the squad.
So far, Tevez has scored a bit over 25%of his team’s 18 goals in the league and has yet to open his Champions League account, but his performances so far for the Bianconeri have been encouraging. In fact, so much so that back in September, Conte vehemently denied that the team had become overdependent on him to provide the goals for them but his influence so far on his new squad is indisputable, as he grabbed his 5th league goal against Genoa this Sunday and asked many questions of the Grifone’s back-line in an all-around fantastic performance for a side that desperately needed to get back to winning ways following their disappointment in the Champions League against Real Madrid.
As for Napoli, they were expected by some to fall apart after their talismanic attacker Edinson Cavani was sold to PSG for a reported €64 million this past summer—which made him the most expensive signing in Ligue 1 history. However, with the departure of the Uruguayan, last year’s Scudetto runners-up were able to acquire a whole slew of new faces to refurbish their side, including Higuain’s Los Blancos teammates Raul Albiol and Jose Callejon, and Liverpool keeper Pepe Reina on a season-long loan deal.
As for El Pipita, he’s started off well in the league including a double to power the Partenopei past Torino this past weekend to ensure that they continue to maintain their second place standing and still in the running for the Scudetto at the end of the season—which brings his goal tally to five and has also recorded an assist as well. And in terms of European competition, he scored his debut goal for his new club in their opening day clash with Borussia Dortmund in a group that many have described as “the Group of Death”.
Both sides suffered their first league defeats in round 8 putting them five points behind current leaders Roma, who made it a perfect eight for eight with 2-0 victory over Napoli in that same round. As for Juventus, they lost for the first time to Fiorentina at the Viola’s home ground since 1998 when they inexplicably threw away a two goal lead (courtesy of Tevez and Paul Pogba) in 15 minutes during the second half.
In the Champions League, although the Partenopei have exactly the same number of points—six—as Arsenal and BVB, they’re currently in third thanks to a worse goal differential than the Gunners and last year’s CL runners’ up in what can certainly be described as one of the toughest groups in the tournament so far. Juventus, on the other hand, face a very difficult task as they’ve yet to win a single game and are only on two points, just one ahead of Danish side Copenhagen and three behind Galatasaray after losing to Real Madrid earlier this week.
So, given this, both sides will definitely be counting on their new Argentine acquisitions to continue producing in order to effectively keep the ball rolling on their league and continental ambitions. Which one will turn out to be the better signing for his new club? We’ll just have to wait and see, but so far, neither side can really say that they regret making some much needed additions to their attack during this past summer’s transfer market.