Here's how Spalletti can save himself and Juventus

Chilled by the two hours spent in vain in the Oslo rain, Luciano Spalletti realized his adventure with the national team was over. The glassy look that would accompany him in the following days, those spent as a dead man walking due to a dismissal in the middle of the Azzurri's two-week training camp , with another match to play and his suitcase already packed on his bed, represented for months the final image of his transition as coach. A man drained, devastated by his own mistakes . He, accustomed by nature to being incendiary, a visceral lover of the job of coach and leader of a group of men, had had to deal with the bitterest of truths: the sudden inability to connect with a group. Who knows, perhaps for a few weeks he even felt out of place.

From 2010 to today, no Italian coach has managed to emerge unscathed from the Coverciano adventure, with the exception of Antonio Conte. For Cesare Prandelli, there's a before and after after the World Cup experience in Brazil; Gian Piero Ventura is only mentioned again when he himself tells us he deserved more from the critics; Roberto Mancini's Arab breakthrough, which came after the club failed to qualify for Qatar, ended up overshadowing even a European Championship victory. Now it's up to the man from Certaldo to prove he hasn't lost his touch, that after all, he won the last Serie A he played in, and that over the last twenty years, trying to cast a veil over what happened in charge of the national team, he never missed a beat, never missed a target. Spalletti was a guarantee of quality . A guarantee of a place in Europe, in the Champions League, of a Scudetto battle to be fought even when not all the elements were in place. And in this battered Juventus, which is picking up the pieces as they go, there are few perfectly formed pieces to be seen. The certainty is Bremer, but the leader of the Juventus defence is still stuck in the pits. So, where will good old Lucio start again, eager to get back to enjoying full days after spending so many (too many?) of them laboriously searching for something to do?

He's a coach, not a selector, and it shows. He finds himself in a similar situation to his last spell at Roma, though there was a higher level of technical expertise and a greater sense of discouragement at the vast amount of squandered talent. But even there, there were noteworthy flashes of brilliance: Diego Perotti's transformation into a maneuvering center forward, even at the cost of losing Edin Dzeko and engaging in a rustic duel with Francesco Totti; Radja Nainggolan's definitive exaltation as a devastating attacker behind the striker; the famous "three-and-a-half defense," a concept less innovative than one might think, essentially a full-back pushing forward and a full-back holding back. But Spalletti, who has brought the term "braccetto" (arm) into the daily conversation of a constantly evolving football, is also adept at this: surprising opponents with alchemies simpler than the clothes he dresses them up in.

There are quite a few players in need of a lift in Turin. One above all is Teun Koopmeiners, who seems tailor-made for the role of an attacking midfielder with the freedom to run and shoot . And if there's one thing Spalletti knows how to do, it's boost his players' self-esteem. A good part of his future at Juventus could depend on the work he'll be able to do with the Dutchman, implicitly attached to the need to secure a Champions League spot at the end of the season. It would be foolish to think of anything more, at least for now, even if the top half of the table seems subject to change. In a league where the center forward seems extinct—check the top scorers for any verification—the Tuscan coach finds himself with three in his squad, the very man who has long favored attacking lines where the theoretical number nine carried the number ten on his shoulders. The other big dilemma is choosing the man to rely on up front: Vlahovic, Openda, David, one shirt (unless innovations are always around the corner) for three, so far no one has been truly convincing, and not necessarily for reasons related to the pitch.

He won't have a midfield at the level of his past teams, as the Juventus one doesn't seem particularly well-assembled. Koopmeiners's midfield will have to find the ideal placement for Thuram and especially Locatelli, who was described a year and a few months ago as "a bit too conservative for where the playmaker role is going." In all likelihood, however, he will be the one to fill that role, which has always been a key one in his teams, with the likes of Pizarro, Brozovic, and Lobotka seemingly an emanation of the coach in midfield.

But the main challenge will be Spalletti's against Spalletti himself, a duel of the soul that the Tuscan, fresh from a long series of mea culpas regarding his time as coach, must win at all costs. Only a few months have passed since his last stint as coach, yet it feels like a lifetime. If he's already internalized his failure to fuel it, then Juventus could soon return to flying high, fueled by the flames his gaze radiates. When he arrived in Rome for the second time in 2016, a photo of him shaking hands with Maicon went viral: it showed the face of a man ready to tear anyone apart just to reclaim the Serie A stage . If, however, he were to soon find himself with the glassy post-Oslo eye, it would be a problem for him and for Juventus.

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