The Western-style showdown between Adzic and the Juventus defence

13 September 2025. Juventus Stadium, Venaria Reale, Turin. In the 91st minute, Vasilije Adžić, a 19-year-old product of the Bianconeri’s youth academy, unleashes a thunderous right-footed strike just below the crossbar of Inter’s goal, sealing a 4–3 home victory.

13 September 2026. Mapei Stadium in Reggio Emilia, home of Sassuolo. Now the Montenegrin lad plays in black and green, sent by Juve to rack up minutes in Serie A that Luciano Spalletti cannot or will not give him: for Alberto Aquilani, the Emilian manager, Adžić is instead a talent best deployed further back, starting as a central midfielder with the freedom to push forward. It’s easy for that to happen here; Lorenzo Pellegrini and Davide Frattesi have managed it, and Darryl Bakola is giving it a go.

Ninety minutes plus four, even more dramatic. The match was 2–2 after a flurry of action in the dying seconds, when the left-footed winger Edon Zhegrova – wearing the original pink shirt – had scored his second goal of the match to equalise the Scottish player Kieron Bowie’s goal.

With thirty seconds remaining in stoppage time, Sassuolo launch a counter-attack down the right through Armand Laurienté. The Frenchman used to play in that very position back in his homeland; whereas in the area between Sassuolo and Reggio, he usually has to drop back to make way for Domenico Berardi or Christian Volpato. Laurienté has space: Benjamín Domínguez calls for a deep ball, Adžić is unmarked on the left and receives it.

Right in the thick of it, number 17 realises that the ‘marking’ of Douglas Luiz (why was he the last man?) is, to put it mildly, lacklustre: if anything, it’s lax, at two kilometres per hour. Before him lies a whole new world: a goalkeeper who wasn’t there with him last year to celebrate that last-gasp victory – Guglielmo Vicario. The move turns into a high-noonday Western-style showdown, pistol against rifle.

A smooth stop; Douglas drops back but doesn’t close the gap, his legs spread wide in an improvised stance, as if he were out of position. Vicario knows that Vasilije will shoot anyway, even if perhaps not straight away. The playmaker gains a few centimetres, not metres. The Brazilian is waiting for him in the centre, but the open space stretches straight ahead of the opponent. At the last moment, the player in the pink shirt decides to intervene by raising his right leg, but it is too late.

Adžić still has a fraction of a second to snap a photograph of Vicario, the goal, and the away supporters’ stand before the execution. He has no way of realising that this is an act of fratricide. There is only the here and now; at most, a moment’s regret for not celebrating – but that comes later, only later. The Balkan sniper finally takes aim and fires a low right-footed shot, into the opposite corner to where he scored 365 days ago.

There is no time left to turn things around: once again, his 20-year-old from overseas, who came up through the ranks at Vinovo, is proving decisive for Juve in mid-September. While it makes strategic sense to loan him out in order to maximise his impact in today’s rather lacklustre Italian football, one has to wonder why Spalletti did not give him much of a chance last season, after he had secured that prestigious victory over Inter.

Questions that linger on this Sunday, between the looming shadow of Antonio Conte behind the zebra-striped dugout and the first two penalties awarded in the league after more than thirty matches. Have we become a country of impeccable defenders, or is it also down to some regulatory adjustments regarding unpunishable handballs and other quirks of artificial modern football?

Another factor pointing towards a change of direction is the total absence, so far, of any goalless draws in Serie A results: so un-Italian, so little missed. Long live the carefree football of Diego Moreira, the Belgian left-winger who evokes memories of the euphoria surrounding Curação at the World Cup in June: he scores two superbly crafted goals, saves Milan and runs towards the Curva (how sad to see the Lazio end empty), asserting that he has been fielded on the right side, not with his foot reversed by some new mad scientists.

In the Nuremberg of the future, the experts will be acquitted and whoever founds a party opposed to the ‘three-way defence’ will win the elections.