During Juventus’ 2-0 victory over AC Milan there was a noticeable absence: that of Arturo Vidal. Vidal is the workhorse of the Juventus midfield and perhaps the best player on the team. However, however thanks to accumulating enough yellow cards, Vidal found himself suspended for the Milan match. What happened? Did the Juventus midfield fall apart?
Well of course not. They won 2-0. That said, Milan’s attacking trident of Adel Taarabt, Andrea Poli, and, – to a lesser extent – Kaka had done a fine job of marking both Paul Pogba and Andrea Pirlo out of the game. Meanwhile, Vidal’s direct replacement for the match Claudio Marchisio was too busy defending to make any memorable plays in attack.
Which brings us to our main topic today: Claudio Marchisio. A question from fellow Forza Italian Football columnist Enzo Misuraca on this week’s podcast inspired this column. Enzo asked me why Marchisio had seemingly fallen out of favor at Juve, more or less. I was a bit surprised because, I had never thought of it that way. Granted, the ascendance of Paul Pogba has definitely cut into Marchisio’s playing time, and Marchiso’s bland form in the first few months of this season were a stark contrast to Pogba’s flare.
However, with the roles somewhat switched now, and Pogba in bad form as Marchisio impresses one can see that this is just players and their changing form. Conte often picks his sides based on who is in the best form, and more importantly who needs to be rotated in or out.
Additionally, one only needs to look at the games versus Real Madrid to see how much Conte values Marchisio, where Conte put him in an unorthodox role, on paper a winger but in practice an advanced midfielder. Marchisio is often the player who gets asked to fill these roles, just like when Conte flirted with a 3-5-1-1 towards the end of last season.
One can trace this to Marchisio’s “success” in the mezz’ala role – wide midfielder – under Luigi Delneri. Whether this perceived versatility has been a good thing or a bad thing for Claudio is up in the air. Either way, it has provided him with playing time in situations where he may have not otherwise received much.
Indeed, Marchisio once again proved his versatility. He has now added regista to the list of midfield roles he can successfully play under. With Andrea Pirlo out injured back in December, Marchisio slotted in for Pirlo. This surprised me at first, but within 30 minutes Marchisio had given Juventus something they had lacked in the Conte era: a true second option for the deep lying playmaker.
That said, Marchisio is still an excellent midfielder when playing in a box to box role, the kind he was in against Milan. While he may not be as consistently excellent as Vidal is in this role, he is almost always defensively solid. With Pogba, you get a good amount of attacking skill and flair and he is usually a fine defender.
However, he’s not totally consistent in the defensive phases of his play, whereas Marchisio is a complete workhorse. Indeed, there is a noticeable gulf in defending strength for Juve’s left flank when Marchisio is missing. Perhaps this is linked to Juve’s defensive troubles this season – relative to the other Conte era teams?
He often gets accused of being “invisible.” What that means is, he’s too busy taking up space by opposing players – so they aren’t a passing option for teammates – and doing other unglamorous things that are often off-camera. To the viewer at home, Marchisio is quite often literally not there. However, watching just one game in person you can quickly see how busy Marchisio is during matches.
I am very impressed. Few people actually notice how much Marchisio works for the team though I do have something to add
To a certain extent, we have seen Vidal venturing more and more offensively, because Marchisio sacrifices himself defensively, while we can see Pirlo venturing less to the final third with Vidal and Pogba up front – so essentially with Marchisio in non regista mode, Juventus becomes more “defensive”