Empoli and Juventus are a common thread in Rugani’s career. The defender spent his youth years at Empoli and then played for the highest youth teams of Juventus and Empoli before making his definitive breakthrough in professional football. That breakthrough was at his youth club in the 2013/2014 season. With Rugani in the starting line-up almost every game, Empoli was promoted to Serie A in 2014. The following season, the defender did not miss a single minute at the highest level in Italy. After that, he left for Juventus.
His debut for the Italian top club was in 2015. He remained in Turin continuously until 2020, after which he was loaned to Stade Rennes and Cagliari. Since the summer of 2021, he has played his matches for Juventus again. Ultimately, Rugani wore the shirt of ‘The Old Lady’ for almost 150 matches and scored eleven goals.
Against Ajax
Rugani was in the starting line-up twice in 2019 during the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League against Ajax. He played the entire match for Juventus in both Amsterdam (1-1) and Turin (1-2 for Ajax) and was eliminated by Erik ten Hag’s team. He also played in Amsterdam in 2017, at that time with Italy against the Dutch national team: 1-2 for the Italians.
Zooming in on his final year in Serie A with Juventus, Rugani played seventeen league games for the Italians. On average, the defender played over 75 minutes that season. In those seventeen games, the Italian can show a percentage of 91 percent successful passes. More than half of those (58 percent) went forward and almost ninety percent of the passes forward were successful. In the so-called ‘final third’, the percentage of completed passes is 84 percent.
In his last season at Juventus, Rugani scored three times. In the league against Cagliari and Frosinone and in the Copa Italia against Salernitana. The defender also went through all the youth teams of the national team and has played seven times for Italy so far.
Second Italian player
With Rugani, the number of Italians who have ever played for Ajax is doubled. After Lorenzo Lucca, the defender becomes the second Italian player in Amsterdam service. At the current Ajax, he will find two compatriots in the technical staff: coach Francesco Farioli and assistant coach Daniele Cavalletto.