Juventus have begun their life post Cristiano Ronaldo after the Portuguese forward secured a return to Manchester United 12 years after he left the club to join Real Madrid. At the time of writing, Ronaldo has had a smooth start at United scoring four goals in his first three games since return, however, Juventus have struggled to cope up without Ronaldo with the Bianconeri yet to win a game this Serie A season. During his time at Juventus, Cristiano Ronaldo finished as the top scorer for Juventus in all three of his seasons and finished as the top scorer of the league in 2020/21. So, he will be surely missed, however, Juventus do have a capable attacking unit that can now step up and make a name for themselves.
The following visualisation shows how the attacking unit of Juventus, excluding Ronaldo, performed last season.
Getting the goals is always going to be a big challenge when you don’t have Ronaldo in your team. There has been only two instances of a Juventus player other than Ronaldo scoring more than 10 goals in the league since Ronaldo signed for the club. Those two players were Álvaro Morata in 2020/21 and Paulo Dybala in 2019/20. It is fair to mention that these two players will now bear the burden of making sure Juventus score often. Juventus have also added Moise Kean to their squad. Kean struggled to create an impact at Everton and now having returned to play once again under current manager Allegri, the Italian forward will look to finally make a name for himself where he spent a major part of his youth career. It will be interesting to see how frequently Kean starts.
In addition to goal scoring responsibility, Dybala will also be tasked with the burden of creating chances frequently for his teammates. However, that will not be something new to the Argentinian player because, as seen in the visual, Dybala ranked in the 95th percentile for xA per 90 among attacking forwards in the Serie A. In addition to Dybala, Federico Chiesa will also be responsible for making sure Juventus create enough chances. The versatile 23-year-old Chiesa, on loan from Fiorentina, ranked above average for creative metrics last season, like Dybala. Federico Bernardeschi has struggled to stay fit and has naturally been second choice since signing for Juventus. However, he was quite impressive last season whenever he got the chance as evident in his numbers in the visual. Similarly, the highly rated Dejan Kulusevski has also struggled to make a mark in the Juventus team. Simply put, Dybala, Chiesa will be the go to men for Juventus this season and manager Allegri will be hopeful that Ronaldo is not missed too much and some of his young attackers can make the step up to help the Bianconeri win the title.
