All or nothing will benefit or damage Juventus?

We know that it has not been an easy road to the release of the new chapter of the anthology series "All or Nothing" that follows Juventus' 2020/21 season, delayed compared to the previous episodes on Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspurs, most likely because the results obtained by the bianconeri have been far below expectations. Some claims that Andrea Agnelli himself has tried to block the release of the series, given the President's own unflattering remarks about both the previous year under Maurizio Sarri and the SuperLeague fiasco that he personally led. There is no doubt that when it signed the agreement with Amazon Prime, Juventus did not expect to play such a season, one of the worst in its recent history. In fact, what should have been the consecration of a cycle with the achievement of the tenth consecutive championship has turned into a disappointing and decadent catwalk for the great champions of the last generation. 

Juventus was the first Italian team to close a contract with Amazon's streaming service, a contract that is rumored to have been quite lucrative even though there are obviously no official figures. According to The Telegraph, three years ago Manchester City earned more than 14 million euros from its series, considering both the money paid by Amazon and the money collected in merchandising through the visibility obtained. Similarly, Tottenham Hotspurs also enjoyed the same economic fortune, as detailed in the Deloitte Football Money League 2021 financial analysis, and Juventus hopes to be the next beneficiary. 

Although the product is not at the level of its predecessors, the Juventus' All or Nothing could also become a great driving force to position the club on an even more international level by unifying its brand with Premier League teams. A precise desire of the Agnelli property, which began with the new stadium, Allianz Stadium, and in the minimal restyling of the logo in addition to the collaboration with Palace. A desire to modernize the club's profile, to reach younger generations, which is in contrast to the narrative proposed in All or Nothing, strongly unbalanced on the positions of the senators to the detriment of new talent and international players.

Needless to say, Gianluigi Buffon, Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini are the real protagonists of these eight episodes released on November 25 on Amazon Prime, which is more careful to look at and celebrate the past rather than bear witness to current events. The one between the old guard and the new cycle of young people grafted in the last two years that did not work either on the field or in front of the camera. A cold fusion that was badly managed by Andrea Pirlo on the bench and that was buried by shovelfuls of rhetoric and hazing in the series, with exhausting references to the mentality of the great old and the young who must take them as an example. 

The difficulty of dosing all the Old Lady buzzwords of "finals aren't played, they're won" or "this is Juve style" with a more modern, inclusive and participatory approach made the final product tiring and ultimately uninteresting. Compared to previous editions, centered on figures at antipodes in attitude but similar in charisma like Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho, a true catalyst is missing. Years after their release, Pep's motivational speeches in the locker room as well as Mou's rants are still a cult while Pirlo's presence in the series is lateral, as if it was already marked by the fate of the new coach. 

At the same time the strongest personality, Cristiano Ronaldo, who in the Amazon executives' plan was supposed to be the reference point for the international audience, being an even more popular brand than the Juventus team, is a foreign body to the group and the series. His best moments are always far from the team, when he sunbathes alone without a shirt or he has to record the Bianconeri's Christmas commercial, and the only scene where the intensity is tangible, namely the fight with Cuadrado in the interval of the return match against Porto, is a dull imitation compared to the scenes we have seen in other editions of All or Nothing. 

In general, the entire project shows all the production difficulties and subsequent distribution hiccups and does not reach the level of immediacy needed to achieve a result in line with the aesthetics of the series. Certainly the restrictions due to Covid-19 have complicated things, but in All or Nothing Juventus are missing those stolen shots, the behind the scenes and those details finally revealed that make a project of this type really interesting. The locker room has been replaced by the players' private home, and their voices have been replaced by the annoyingly set off-screen voice that immediately makes Alessandro Borghese's program.

Juventus is also living in these days the chaos linked to the investigations of Consob and the Turin Public Prosecutor's Office on the capital gains falsified in recent years to cover the holes in the budget. A new fracture in the armor of the usually unbreakable Juve style, which this season of All or Nothing should have helped to revive. Instead, despite the fact that Amazon's series follows the contemporary trend of audiovisual products that let teams and players have their own storytelling, Juventus has shown that it still hasn't chosen if it really wants to trade its austere profile for the transparency required by contemporary transmediality. And just as for its roster, suspended between old senators and young people on the verge of exploding, sooner or later it will have to decide which direction to take with its communication.