Spalletti on the Juventus job: ‘At Roma I coached a fanbase, here you coach a mentality’
FROSINONE, ITALY - AUGUST 23: Luciano Spalletti head coach of FC Juventus gestures during the Serie A match between FC Internazionale and AC Monza at Stadio Giuseppe Meazza on August 23, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images)
Luciano Spalletti has spoken at length about what managing Juventus means to him, drawing a distinction between this job and every other one he has held.
Speaking to Tuttosport, via TuttoMercatoWeb, the coach framed it as something beyond the usual relationship between a manager and a club.
“At Roma I coached a fanbase, at Napoli you coach a city. At Inter a tradition, with the national team a people. At Juve you coach a mentality: it’s the history of football,” Spalletti said.
“Here there’s the Juventus mode. It isn’t just an impetuous emotion. It’s joy, pride and responsibility, feelings that never leave me alone. It’s the never-banal intensity of exaggerated sadness and overwhelming happiness. You mustn’t live only on football, but on Juventus. We’re in competition with our own level and not with others.”
Juventus boss Spalletti: ‘Doing something you like is freedom’
Asked what it represents to be the Bianconeri coach, he did not hold back.
“It’s something grandiose. Enormous. Doing something you like is freedom, being happy to go and do it is love. There are very high responsibilities, of course. It will be difficult for us, but it’s a task I take on willingly. A feeling? Actually yes, here I feel happy and free.”
He also reflected on accepting the job as a caretaker last October, after Igor Tudor’s dismissal.
“Principally trust in the team. Then in myself, and finally the history of the club. Experience leads you to accept and manage everything that happens, without it ever affecting the happiness I feel every day doing this wonderful job. There’s beauty here, I had no hesitation or doubt. It took me a moment to want to test myself against this world, then the possibility of renewing matured and of starting to lay foundations for the work to come. We’ll see if we manage to go and take what everyone expects.”
The context gives the optimism some weight. Spalletti signed a two-year extension to June 2028 in April, and survived an opening to this season that had his position openly questioned after a 3-2 defeat at Sassuolo. The 5-0 Europa League win over NEC Nijmegen and a home victory against Atalanta have since calmed matters considerably.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.