Luciano Spalletti’s first defeat as Juventus manager was a tough pill to swallow, with his side falling 2-1 to Napoli at the Stadio Maradona. The Italian coach admitted that his team was too timid and struggled to keep up with Napoli’s intensity.

“We were too timid moving the ball around, then lost it cheaply, so they made us run after them,” Spalletti told reporters. Napoli’s strong shape and quality made it difficult for Juventus to control the game, and they often found themselves on the back foot.

Spalletti’s decision to start Kenan Yildiz in a False 9 role was an interesting one, but it didn’t quite pay off. Yildiz did score a temporary equaliser, but Rasmus Hojlund’s brace ultimately secured the win for Napoli.

The Juventus coach explained that his team’s struggles were partly due to poor positioning and a lack of mobility in midfield. “Locatelli sat a bit too deep and didn’t maintain the position I wanted in midfield, then the two forwards had little mobility, and we kept getting bogged down in the middle,” he said.

Spalletti made some changes at half-time, introducing Jonathan David for Juan Cabal, which brought some improvement. However, Napoli’s pace and quality on the counter-attack proved too much for Juventus.

“We did better in the second half, as we went man for man, but still suffered with the pace and quality of the Napoli counter-attack,” Spalletti said. Despite the loss, Spalletti remains optimistic about his team’s potential, but acknowledges that they need to improve quickly.

“We can do better than we did today, as we gifted an incredible number of passes. If you don’t control the game, you end up being the passenger for the others making decisions for you,” he said.