Previewing Cristiano Ronaldo’s 4th Season with Juventus
When Cristiano Ronaldo signed with Juventus in the summer of 2018, the club had won seven straight Serie A titles and made two UEFA Champions League final appearances in 2015 and 2017 respectively.
Both final appearances resulted in heartache for the Bianconeri as they lost to formidable opponents, Barcelona and Real Madrid, respectively. Ronaldo’s arrival was met with a sense of optimism, as fans of The Old Lady believed his success in Europe would be pivotal to the side.
Ronaldo has 5 UEFA Champions League winners’ medals to his name. That is four more than Juventus have won since the tournament's transformation from the European Cup to its current iteration in the 1992/93 season.
Instead, Juventus have finished runners-up in Europe's elite club competition on five separate occasions since their only win of the 1995/96 season. Despite their misfortune in Europe, they have remained dynastic in Serie A, winning the Scudetto trophy on 11 separate occasions since the 2001/02 season.
So when the Portuguese international joined the club on a 4-year contract, there was reasonable expectation that he would help the club continue their domestic dominance, while helping them go one step further in Europe and win the UEFA Champions League.
Since his arrival, Ronaldo has enjoyed relative success with the Bianconeri, which we will take a look at below. The 5-time Ballon d’Or winner is in the final season of his 4 year contract, and there are a lot of interesting factors to focus on before Juventus start their Serie A campaign against Udinese on the 22nd of August.
New season, new manager at the helm for Juventus and Cristiano Ronaldo
Ronaldo has played under three different managers in his three seasons in Turin. Each manager adopted their own unique philosophy on the pitch, which surely did not make matters easy.
Massimiliano Allegri was in what turned out to be the final year of his first spell with Juventus when Ronaldo joined the club in the 2018/19 season. It turned out to be a successful final season in charge on the domestic front, as Juventus won the league by 11 points over runners-up Napoli. Ronaldo scored 21 league goals that season and assisted a further eight goals in his first season in Turin.
His second season came with the appointment of Maurizio Sarri, who also led the club to the Scudetto in his lone season at the club. Ronaldo netted 31 goals in Serie A in that season – 10 more than what he achieved in the previous season.
Sarri was then replaced by pirlo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Andrea Pirlo, who disappointingly finished 4th in the league last season. Despite winning the Coppa Italia, he was sacked and replaced by the returning Massimiliano Allegri, who returns for his second spell with the club.
This means that Ronaldo will have to acclimatize to a new manager for the 4th season in a row, something that could be a factor when he has to discuss his future with the club.
A pivotal run in the UEFA Champions League
The Bianconeri have had a disappointing string of results in the UEFA Champions League, notably losing to Ajax Amsterdam in 2019, Olympique Lyonnais in 2020, and FC Porto in 2021. The results came before Juve reached the late knockout rounds of the competition as they bounced out of the quarterfinals in 2019, and suffered successive round-of-16 defeats in 2020 and 2021.
The defeats have highlighted a couple of lingering concerns about the squad, namely the midfield personnel and their inconsistent attacking options.
In the 2018/19 season, Ronaldo scored all of Juventus’ goals in the knockout rounds, highlighted by a stunning hat trick against Atletico Madrid to help his side return from a 2-0 first leg deficit. Their defeat to Lyon was no different as they lost 2-2 on aggregate, with Ronaldo scoring both goals.
The exit against Porto highlighted those aforementioned concerns about the squad, as Pirlo made six changes to his team between the first and second leg encounters, including two different centre-back pairings for both legs.
Their counterparts, on the other hand, fielded an unchanged lineup as they defeated the Old Lady 4-4 on aggregate on the away goals rule. Ronaldo failed to score in this encounter, but Juve’s issues were not a lack of goals this time around.
There has been a lot of pressure on the Turin-based side in Europe, and this year is no different. They need to improve along the margins in order to go deep into the Champions League knockout stages this season.
What to expect this season
On the domestic front, Juventus will look to regain the Serie A title back from rivals Inter, who won the league by a comfortable 12-point margin.
With Allegri back at the helm, they have a manager who has never failed to win Italy’s domestic top flight title. He is also responsible for leading Juve to those Champions League finals in 2015 and 2017, so Juventus will look to do more of the same in his second spell with the club.
Most importantly, the Bianconeri will need to turn their fortunes around this season in order to convince Ronaldo to sign a new contract. Otherwise, they will risk losing their talismanic forward for free by the end of the season.
Ronaldo has been the side’s top goal scorer in each of his three seasons, and finished as Serie A Footballer of the Year in 2 of his 3 seasons there. At 36 years of age, Ronaldo still has a lot to offer the sport and it will be interesting to see how his fourth season with Juventus shapes out.