Douglas Luiz has become “a huge problem” for Juventus since his move from Aston Villa this summer and will need a “devastating mentality” to turn things around.
That’s according to Antonio Cassano, who has been talking about the former Aston Villa man on the Viva El Futbol show.
Luiz joined Juventus in a €51.5m deal in the summer as part of a major agreement between the two sides that saw Samuel Illing-Junior and Enze Barrenechea go the other way.
The deal has not really worked out for any of the players so far, with the two Aston Villa signings heading out on loan and Douglas Luiz struggling under Thiago Motta.
He had moved to Juve to be a key cog in Motta’s revolution but has instead found himself out of the picture, managing just 28% of the available minutes in Serie A and 24% in the Champions League.
His time on the pitch has been disastrous too, with several disappointing displays and plenty of criticism coming from the Italian media as a result.
It’s becoming a big problem that Motta and Juventus have to solve given the money spent to sign him from Aston Villa, but Cassano believes it may already be too late.
“Douglas Luiz is a huge problem,” he said.
“I liked him at Aston Villa with Emery, he had a sensational season, he is a box-to-box player. There can be difficulties in settling in, a thousand situations… He played one game out of seven in the league as a starter, at Empoli.
“If you want to help him settle in, you put him in, not the last 15 minutes. Now he has lost confidence, you can see that he is disoriented. He must not play in the two in the middle, he is more of a mezzala, he is the classic Brazilian.
“It means that he can only play where Koopmeiners is playing now. In midfield Douglas Luiz is struggling a lot. What did they think when they bought him?
“This boy is now disintegrated, he must have a devastating mentality to get out of it, he also lost the national team. Douglas Luiz is an issue that Thiago Motta must resolve.”
