Despite a 12-game goalless streak, erratic playing time, and reports he may be on the move again in January, Jonathan David is fully committed to Juventus and the Italian club is fully committed to the Canadian striker, sources close to the player tell TSN.
David hasn’t scored since his Juventus debut against Parma in late August, has started just four league games, and is now seemingly in a competition for minutes with fellow forward Dušan Vlahović, who has six goals in 13 appearances across all competitions.
A microscope was always going to be fixed on David and his form as soon as he made a summertime free transfer to Italian soccer’s most successful club and signed a five-year contract.
But the 25-year-old’s recent struggles might be another example of an acclimation period to a new club in a new league that David has experienced twice before since he moved from Ottawa minor soccer to Gent in Belgium in 2018.
Although he scored four goals in his first four appearances for Gent in August of 2018, David followed that strong start to his European career with a 14-game goalless drought in the Belgium league that stretched into mid-December that year.
David would go no longer than four league games without scoring a goal in the remaining near 18 months he spent in Belgium. He finished his two seasons with Gent scoring 37 goals in 83 appearances.
It then took 11 games for the Ottawa native to score his first Ligue 1 goal after making a 30 million Euro move to Lille in August of 2020. David finished that first season with 13 goals in 37 Ligue 1 appearances, and scored a critical, late-season goal against Paris Saint Germain that helped win Lille the French league title.
Over the course of five seasons with Lille, David would experience further barren patches of seven- or nine-game scoreless stretches, but with 109 goals over 232 appearances he is considered one of the greatest players in club history.
It is fair to assume David might be navigating a similar adjustment period again, but struggles at one of Europe’s historic clubs are certainly magnified, especially when Juventus as a whole is struggling to find its footing in Serie A and in the Champions League.
Following a dramatic win over rivals Inter Milan in mid-September – during which David assisted on the game winner – Juventus went three games in Europe and four games in Serie A without a win, which led to the firing of head coach Igor Tudor.
The 36-time Italian champions, currently sixth in Serie A, have now moved on to former Napoli, Roma, and Italian national team boss Luciano Spalletti. But pressure to win is high at a big club that hasn’t won a league title in five years.
Nevertheless, for now at least, there is no indication to those close to David that the overall heightened temperature at Juventus translates to brinkmanship or ultimatums about David and his place at the club.
