Juventus' Squad Dilemma: Spalletti's New Approach

At Juventus, the summer has brought a familiar problem back into sharp focus: a squad swollen with players the club would happily move on, and a market that doesn’t exactly queue up for them.

For years, significant money has gone into signings who never quite shifted the dial in Turin. Big reputations arrived at the Allianz Stadium, big expectations followed, but the performances too often fell flat. Those players are still on the books, still on the wage bill, and still short of suitors.

Under Thiago Motta, the solution was blunt. He drew a clear line through the group, separating those he trusted from those he didn’t intend to use. The message to the hierarchy was just as clear: find exits, any exits, for the players outside his plans. Juventus tried to oblige, scouring the market for takers, but the appetite elsewhere was limited. Several of those “unwanted” names lingered on the fringes, training apart and waiting for a phone call that never came.

Luciano Spalletti has walked into the same dressing room and chosen a very different route.

Spalletti tears up the blacklist

Rather than inherit Motta’s internal blacklist, Spalletti has folded everyone back into the group. No exile, no early verdicts. Every player, from established starters to those long written off, has been pulled into his pre-season plans.

That includes figures like Arthur Melo, a symbol of Juventus’ recent transfer misfires. Where others saw a sunk cost, Spalletti sees a case to be studied. He has used the friendlies to put all of them under the same light, to watch them in his structure, with his ideas, before deciding who truly belongs.

Italian journalist Giovanni Albanese captured the thinking behind it, explaining that Spalletti does not believe in discarding players “a priori” or treating them like stickers to be peeled off a page and thrown away. The coach wants to “study everyone a bit” first. Only if the answers are negative, Albanese noted, will Spalletti ask the club to move them out. As long as they travel, train and play under his eye, there is something positive in that process.

It is a subtle but important shift. Instead of a manager demanding the club clear the decks before a ball is kicked, Juventus now have a coach insisting on a full audit.

Decisions delayed, not dodged

This does not mean the so‑called deadwood suddenly has a guaranteed future in Turin. The transfer window still offers Juventus a chance — and a need — to trim the squad. The market realities have not changed: shifting high-earning, underperforming players remains difficult, even for a club of this size.

What has changed is the route to that decision. Spalletti wants evidence, not reputations. Training performances, tactical understanding, pre-season minutes — all of it feeds into his recommendations to the board. If certain players fail to convince, the club will again look for exits. If one or two surprise him, a career that looked over in black and white might just flicker back into life.

For a club trying to reset after expensive mistakes, that approach carries a certain logic. Juventus can still cut ties. But this time, they will do it with a manager who has seen everything for himself — and with no excuses left for anyone once the real games begin.