Juventus might face a challenge in Serie A after a terrible loss and 2 big injuries

Even the best teams have off days. Well, most of them.

For the last four years, however, Juventus have been a veritable domestic juggernaut, sweeping away almost all in their path with embarrassing ease. On the rare occasions they have been beaten, it has rarely been by more than a goal, and invariably after their opponents spent the game clinging on for dear life. Juve haven’t always been pretty, but they have always been relentless in pursuit of victory. When they’ve huffed and puffed, they’ve almost always been able to break the door down. As for scoring against them — a defense usually containing Gianluigi Buffon, Giorgio Chiellini, and Leonardo Bonucci — you can almost forget it.

While they’ve been good technically — and have improved tactically under incumbent boss Massimiliano Allegri — their astounding transformation from perennial also-rans to Serie A’s dominant outfit has as much to do with their mentality as more tangible improvements. Under Antonio Conte, they developed an aura of invincibility. In short, they knew, by hook or by crook, they’d come away with the points. Equally important, their opponents knew it, too. It is the kind of transcendental spirit that Manchester United developed under Sir Alex Ferguson, and which ultimately enabled them to achieve things far beyond what they should have.

All of this serves to make Juve’s 3-1 defeat away at mid-table Genoa on the weekend a particular oddity. It wasn’t just that they were beaten, but the manner in which the defeat occurred. It took just three minutes for Genoa to open the scoring

It only took 10 more minutes for Giovanni Simeone — the son of Atlético Madrid manager Diego — to seal his brace. An Alex Sandro own-goal completed the capitulation short of the half-hour mark, leaving Allegri’s side all but out of the game by the halftime whistle. It had been 11 years since they last conceded three goals in the opening period of a match. Not until the final 10 minutes did Miralem Pjanić net their only consolation, as the Bianconeri succumbed to their heaviest league defeat since they were beaten 2-0 in Naples back in March 2014.

Supporters searching for explanations may take some heart from their injury list: former Barcelona fullback Dani Alves — who broke his leg later in the match — started in an unfamiliar position on the right of their back three in the absence of the injured Andrea Barzagli. His defensive partner, Bonucci, withdrew with a thigh problem midway just past the half hour, and is unlikely to play again in 2016. Strike star Gonzalo Higuaín was only fit enough to make the bench, and his compatriot Paulo Dybala is yet to return to training after a spell on the sidelines.

But these circumstances are merely mitigating; they do not mask the fact that this was as un-Juventus-like a result as we’ve seen for a long time. For once, a team who looked authoritative even in defeat were rattled, and rattled by an unlikely opponent. To be sure, Genoa certainly aren’t a bad team, but they’re unlikely to achieve more than a solid mid-table finish under Ivan Jurić this season. They headed into this match on the back of a 3-1 drubbing by Lazio, and less than a month on from shipping three without reply away at an Atalanta side coached by the man they sacked in the summer, Gian Piero Gasperini. They were unlikely candidates to deal Juve such a heavy blow.

Of course, that isn’t to say that the damage sustained by Juventus is necessarily long-term — it would be far too premature to make such a claim. Indeed, they welcome Atalanta B.C. to Turin on Saturday, and having won every one of their home league matches since being held to a 1-1 draw by Frosinone over a year ago, they’ll be expecting to extend their four point lead over Roma at the top of the table — if only provisionally.

But rest assured, their Serie A rivals will certainly have taken note. Juve’s illusion of indomitability has been able to survive sporadic defeats, but it remains to be seen whether it can outlast such a calamitous capitulation. In a sport in which the illusion so often structures the reality, it could prove harder for them to recover than we’d expect.