It was going to happen, and then it wasn’t, but then it did! Gonzalo Higuain is now a Juventino, crossing perhaps one of the most dangerous imaginary boarders from Naples over to Turin. As we all know, Napoli ran Juventus pretty close to the title last season but ultimately fell short. The best way to ensure that doesn’t happen again is to, well, almost break the world transfer record and sign their best player.
But Juventus are running off five Scudetti in a row, Higuain isn’t going to help them win another title. The plan is that Higuain helps Juventus reach the Holy Grail, the Champions League.
Juventus’ history in the Champions League is actually a rather painful lore for the most successful club in Italy. Lars Ricken’s dagger to the heart in ’97, Mijatović’s winner in ’98, penalty heartache in ’03 and more recently, Suarez smashing past Buffon in Berlin.
I’m not a Juventino, I’m simply an outsider. But a loss more eye opening than the loss against Barcelona was the one against Bayern Munich in last year’s Champions League. The Bianconeri finished second in their group and were drawn against the German champions. Juventus actually came a few minutes away from winning the tie, but two former Juventus players (Vidal and Coman) combined for a cross which Müller headed past a helpless Buffon to push the game to extra time. An exhausted Juve simply couldn’t keep up as Bayern won 4-2.
Okay, assuming I haven’t pissed off all Juventini with some of their most painful memories, I’ll get more to the point. Does Gonzalo Higuain improve Juventus’ chances of winning the Champions League? I say yes. But it’s important to remember that a lot of the Champions League is down to luck.
The ‘best’ team doesn’t always win
All the teams with fewer expected goals, won. And this just from recent Champions League games. A quick explanation; expected goals measures how many goals an average team would have scored with the amount and quality of shots created. Each goal scoring attempt is assigned a number based on the chance that this attempt produces a goal. A better quality shot from a good area that has a historical precedence of hitting the back of the net, will have a higher xG.
Expected goals and knockout football have an interesting relationship. In a 38 game season, a team overperforming their xG (think Inter, Fiorentina), will normally regress to the mean and score/concede less goals if they were freely scoring earlier in the season (think Inter, Fiorentina). But for knockout football, we don’t get a large sample size, we only get 15 games maximum. This means a team could easily outperform their xG for the entirety of the competition and go a lot further than they should.
Scale that down from 15 games to a measly two games in a Champions League tie. It is not as hard to outperform your xG in two games. But then you don’t get a chance to regress to the mean if you lose. That’s it. You’re out. Goodbye. The best team in the Champions League isn’t always going to win. That’s why it’s difficult to say ‘ok, we went out, but if we sign this marquee player, we’ll win it!’. Sometimes you have to assess whether the group you have is good enough (Juventus’ 2015/16 squad was) and just re-roll the dice.
That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s really unhealthy that teams obsess over a Champions League. There’s too many variables. Okay you assembled the best team ever, but you may underperform for two games and that’s it.
The Champions League draw is an interesting example of luck but also isn’t kind of luck. For instance, Juventus could have completely avoided Bayern Munich by actually topping their group and getting a lesser team in the round of 16. Juventus are obviously not a round of 16 team, but that’s the stage they exited at last season.
But then again, there is an element of luck. Is there a single person on this earth who wouldn’t think Juventus would have made the final if their route was Roma, Wolfsburg, Manchester City? Of course they would have. That was Real Madrid’s tournament route and they won the whole thing.
Gonzalo Higuain in the Champions League
Gonzalo Higuain (NPG/90 = Non-penalty goals per 90 mins)
There’s a general trend of a drop off when Higuain plays in the Champions League. But there is for most strikers considering you’re facing tougher competition and the games are a lot tighter and defensive. For reference, here’s some other Bianconeri strikers.
Mario Mandzukic
Alvaro Morata (Just for reference)
I don’t think there’s any such thing as a striker that’s guaranteed to get you goals in Europe. Almost everyone is going to have a drop off.
However, I will say that Higuain’s evidently a better goalscorer than Mandzukic and Morata, and I predict this will translate to European ties. The European ties amongst the elite are settled by such fine margins, perhaps only one goal. Higuain is more likely to score that one goal than Mandzukic.
I also don’t buy the ‘Higuain is a bottler’ narrative. The only chance I feel Higuain really should have done better with (in reference to three chances he had in the 2014 WC, 2015 CA, 2016 CA) was the 2014 World Cup chance. Big games are hard to quantify, Juventus v Roma is a big game, but what if it has no title implications? What if Juventus v Bologna did have title implications? Is that a bigger game?
For reference, Higuain contributed 17 goals (15 goals, 2 assists) v top half teams in Serie A last season. Which isn’t much of a drop off 19 goals contribured (19 goals, 0 assists) against bottom half teams.
I also think the fit of Higuain in Juventus’ system won’t be a problem. Juventus have become a lot more possession based under Allegri, but can also operate on the counter. Napoli were the most versatile team in Serie A last season, with the most shots from counter attacking situations (144) and possession situations (101). Juventus were pretty equally balanced with 106 and 66 respectively. As a neutral, I love the concept of Dybala dropping deeper into more of a #10 role to provide for Higuain.
Conclusion
Is the Argentine a €90m upgrade on Mandzukic? Absolutely not. But as your team improves, you have to pay huge fees for minimal upgrades. But minimal upgrades are what take you from Champions League semi finals to lifting the actual trophy. Juventus had the money and this is only going to strengthen their stranglehold on Serie A for the foreseeable future.
You know what else? It’s a message to Europe. Since Allegri took over, Juventus have been knocking on the door of Europe’s elite holding a house party. But Juventus have been regarded as that tier below Barcelona, Real, Bayern in recent years. Well, now they’ve just splashed out €90m on a Serie A record breaker. The big boys are definitely going to take notice.
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