If there was a period of time that personified Douglas Luiz’s horrendous time at Juventus, it was a four-day stretch in early October last year.

In the space of two games, neither of which the Brazilian even started, he managed to give away two penalties and put in performances so bad newspapers in Italy were already labelling him a ‘flop’ despite the season being in the early stages.

Luiz’s stock never recovered from those early weeks. Signed for €50m from Aston Villa, he made a grand total of 27 appearances in all competitions for Juve, amassing just under 900 minutes of football across the campaign. 

Of those 27 games, he started three, and produced no goals nor assists. Many believed Juve had signed a different Douglas Luiz, perhaps a twin brother no one knew about, and certainly not the one who’d impressed for Villa.

Luiz was the second-highest earning member of the squad, but for whatever reason, he failed to impress both Thiago Motta and Igor Tudor over the course of a year.

Initially hailed as a great signing, capitalising on Villa’s need to meet PSR regulations, Luiz showed up to Juve’s training late and somewhat out of condition following the 2024 Copa America. 

He quickly fell foul of Motta, who relegated him to the bench, where he more or less remained for the rest of the campaign. Luiz’s languid style of play was never going to fly in Turin, where blood, sweat and tears is the name of the game.

There was hope that Luiz would eventually click at Juve, but it never materialised. He spent large parts of the season injured, seemed uninterested when he played and made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

After turning up late to Juve’s pre-season training retreat this summer unauthorised, divorce was inevitable. 

Luiz left for Nottingham Forest last week on loan with an obligation to buy pending certain criteria are met. What isn’t in doubt is that the 27-year-old will never play for The Old Lady again.

All of this isn’t to say Luiz is a bad player, but he’s just the latest in a long line of Brazilians that flopped at Juve. It appears an odd quirk; players from arguably the game’s most-celebrated nation rocking up at Italy’s biggest club and failing to leave a mark.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but for the most part Juve and Brazil are oil and water: a mix that just doesn’t jive.

Thirty-one players have donned the Bianconero shirt down the years, and all but a handful have been disasters. 

Brazilian success stories are few and far between. Danilo, Alex Sandro, Julio Cesar and Emerson all fit into that category, but for each of those there are a gluttony of costly failures. 

Juve bought a string of Brazilians in the 1960s, with the majority of them so bad, midfielder Chinesinho aside, they didn’t dip into the Brazilian market again for 25 years.

Of course, the law banning foreigners playing in Italy following the historic defeat to North Korea at the 1966 World Cup didn’t help.

Even when the rule was relaxed in 1980, Juve still didn’t look towards Brazilians despite being in the midst of their period of domestic and European dominance under Giovanni Trapattoni. 

Rugged defender Julio Cesar was signed off the back of an impressive showing for a functional Brazil side at Italia ’90, and he hung around for four years before leaving for Borussia Dortmund. 

Following his departure, there were tumbleweeds for years. Who remembers Athirson, signed in 2001 and whom Luciano Moggi likened to ‘part Roberto Carlos, part Giacinto Facchetti’?

Emerson aside, the list of Brazilian flops makes for exhaustive reading: Gladstone, Douglas Packer, Amauri, Lucio, Hernanes, Dani Alves, Douglas Costa, Rogerio, Athur Melo and Kaio Jorge complete the list.

The nadir of the Brazilian-Juve connection arrived in the shape of Diego and Felipe Melo. Juve, who weren’t exactly flush at the time, paid €50m for the pair in the summer of 2009 as an effort to mount a serious title challenge to Inter.

The diminutive Diego had the heaviest expectation, with the No 10 coming off the back of his greatest season with Werder Bremen. He’d scored 21 goals and had 11 assists as he carried the German side to the final of the UEFA Cup, losing to Shakhtar Donetsk on penalties.

New Juve boss Ciro Ferrara even altered his tactics to accommodate Diego, shifting to a 4-3-1-2.

Diego’s masterclass against Roma in his second game remains the highlight of his lone year in Italy. 

The Brazilian showed what he could do, cutting Luciano Spalletti’s side to pieces, producing not one, but two pieces of magic that had fans frothing at the mouth over what could be. It never got that good again.

A mixture of being at the right club at the wrong time, with Juve a club in transition, hampered Diego. There was a genuine lack of quality around him and Ferrara was out of his depth. As for Felipe Melo, the less said about him, the better. 

Gleison Bremer has a chance of bucking the trend, with the defender excellent for Juve before his season-ending injury in Leipzig last October. Now back in to full fitness, the former Torino man will be at the heart of the defence under Tudor.

So why do so many fail? Juve have always been a club that’s built success on a core of Italians, and to a large extent French players. Even Argentines have fared better in Turin than their South American counterparts. 

The cliche would be the snappy Piedmont air in winter doesn’t bode well for sun-drenched Brazilians plying their trade in Turin, but it’s not that simple.

Juve have always eschewed ‘Joga Bonito’ in favour of ‘grinta’. Winning, after all, was the only thing that mattered to The Old Lady. Therefore the club valued players who rolled up their sleeves and put in a shift. 

This is why the few Brazilian success stories – Danilo, Alex Sandro, Julio Cesar and potentially Bremer – are all defenders.

It’s why, to an extent, Brazilians tend to do better at AC Milan, where the emphasis on playing attractive football is more wedded to the Rossoneri identity.

Kaka, a No 10, won the Ballon d’Or while at the peak of his balletic powers at San Siro. Cafu and Serginho, two buccaneering full-backs who loved to bomb down either side of the pitch, were massively successful at Milanello.

For Luiz. it wouldn’t be a surprise if he rediscovered his love for the game at Forest. The quality is still there, and there’s a mystery as to why the move to Juve failed so badly. 

But one thing is for sure, it’ll be a long time before Juve take another punt on a Brazilian, a connection that just isn’t there.