Allegri is at the point of no return: making mistakes is forbidden

Two seasons without trophies are a heresy at Juve. How the coach of the Old Lady is preparing for the most difficult restart of his career

With a more hollow face than usual, a less fluent gab and the sensation of a surrounding landscape grappling with a gradual but inexorable landslide, Massimiliano Allegri ended the season as one of those sprinters grappling with the last mountain stage of the grand tours: on the one hand the inhuman effort to return within the maximum time, on the other the awareness of having left the worst behind, waiting to see the final goal on which to return to make one’s pace shine. Never, not even in those hours of penalizations and bargaining, of burning eliminations and defeats collected without the semblance of an appeal, however, did he show a hint of hesitation regarding his will to resist the storm: he would still be the black and white leader, clinging fiercely to his convictions and also, to tell the truth, to a contract that is perhaps too heavy to be left on the table lightly in the event of a step back decided independently.