MILAN (AP) — Igor Tudor could be exactly the coach Juventus needs and at exactly the right time.
Tudor accepted the job last weekend, replacing Thiago Motta with the storied Italian club in disarray and discord.
Juventus is out of all competitions, having been eliminated from the Champions League and the Italian Cup. In Serie A, its faint chance of challenging for the title has evaporated after conceding seven goals and scoring none in its last two matches — 4-0 and 3-0 losses to Atalanta and Fiorentina.
That has left a shellshocked Juventus in fifth place and at risk of not qualifying for the Champions League next season. Motta also reportedly lost the support of key players.
Enter Tudor.
The 46-year-old has a reputation for being a fixer, coming into clubs during the season and turning things around — having done that at Udinese (twice), Hellas Verona and Lazio.
Tudor also has a reputation as a no-nonsense coach, who can handle difficult players and who will follow his own beliefs rather than toe the line to appease club bosses.
He left Marseille and Lazio after falling out with the hierarchy.
“Am I someone who resolves problems? I consider myself a coach,” Tudor said in a news conference on Thursday. “I started coaching young and I’ve been doing it for 10-15 years, I have gone around a lot, I can also be a bit particular because I make choices with my heart.
“I continue if I feel it is right. If not, I go home regardless of my contract. I live in the present. I want to be here for 10 years but I will do my work in the same way. We can’t control what happens in the future.”
Tudor has been given a contract until the end of June, taking him through to the end of the domestic season and the Club World Cup in the United States. His contract will reportedly be automatically renewed for another year if Juventus qualifies for the Champions League.
Juventus is one point below fourth-placed Bologna and Tudor’s first match in charge will be on Saturday, at home to Genoa.
“I believe a lot in this team because it has quality players and a great desire to improve,” Tudor said. “We know that we are going through a difficult period and that there has been little time to work on changes, but there are no excuses in life and I have never looked for them.”
Tudor knows Juventus well, having spent almost a decade as a player at the club, and then returning as an assistant coach to Andrea Pirlo in 2020-21. Pirlo and Tudor were fired at the end of that season.
The Croatian tactician is very much aware of the demands of the record 36-time Serie A champion.
“At Juve I learnt a lot, both as a player and as assistant coach,” Tudor said. “This club has a unique work culture. I’ve told the lads about some moments I experienced here as a youngster … what makes up Juve: Respect, discipline, sacrifice and the will to win.
“Over the years I have been involved with many teams and I have never seen a mentality like the one I found here. At Juve, hard work comes first and every choice is made with great care. This spirit must be our starting point.”
One of the many stars Tudor played with at Juventus was Lilian Thuram, who was his Bianconeri teammate for five seasons.
One of Thuram’s sons, Khéphren Thuram, plays for Juventus.
“I spoke to Lilian yesterday and he told me that if Khéphren does something wrong, I have to immediately give him a smack,” Tudor said with a laugh.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Juventus' head coach Thiago Motta looks down during the Serie A soccer match between Fiorentina and Juventus at Florence's Artemio Franchi stadium, Italy, Sunday March 16, 2025. (Alfredo Falcone/LaPresse via AP)
FILE - Lazio coach Igor Tudor gestures during the Serie A soccer match between Monza and Lazio at the U-Power Stadium in Monza, Italy, Saturday May 4 , 2024. (Alberto Mariani/LaPresse via AP, File)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday he believes both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin truly want peace, as he welcomed the “brave” Ukrainian leader for talks at his Florida resort.
“The two leaders want it to end,” Trump said at the outset of the meeting at Mar-a-Lago. Before Zelenskyy arrived, Trump spoke with Putin by phone for more than an hour, and planned to speak with him again soon after.
Greeting Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said of him: “This gentleman has worked very hard, and is very brave, and his people are very brave."
Zelenskyy, by Trump's side, said he’d discuss issues of territorial concessions with Trump, which have so far been a red line for his country. He said his negotiators and Trump’s “have discussed how to move step by step and bring peace closer” and would continue to do so in the meeting.
Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s capital in the days before the meeting.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, said the call was initiated by the U.S. side, lasted over an hour, and was “friendly, benevolent, and businesslike.” Ushakov said Trump and Putin agreed to speak again “promptly” after Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy.
Trump and Zelenskyy met at Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, where the U.S. president is spending the holidays. Zelenskyy, who arrived in Miami in the morning, said the two planned to discuss security and economic agreements in their early afternoon meeting. He said he will raise “territorial issues” as Moscow and Kyiv remain fiercely at odds over the fate of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
In overnight developments, three guided aerial bombs launched by Russia struck private homes in the eastern city of Sloviansk, according to the head of the local military administration, Vadym Lakh. Three people were injured and one man died, Lakh said in a post on the Telegram messenger app.
The strike came the day after Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with ballistic missiles and drones on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding 27, a day before planned talks between the leaders of Ukraine and the United States, Ukrainian authorities said. Explosions boomed across Kyiv as the attack began in the early morning and continued for hours.
In advance of his meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy said Sunday that he spoke on the phone with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, filling him in “on the situation on the frontline and on the consequences of Russian strikes.” He posted on X: “Thank you, Keir, for the constant coordination!" Zelenskyy's office said he will speak by phone with allies after the meeting with Trump.
Trump, on Truth Social, said he and Zelenskyy will meet in the main dining room of Mar-a-Lago and the news media will be allowed in.
In a meeting Saturday with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Zelenskyy said the key to peace is “pressure on Russia and sufficient, strong support for Ukraine.” To that end, Carney announced more economic assistance from his government to help Ukraine rebuild.
Denouncing the “barbarism” of Russia’s latest attacks on Kyiv, Carney credited both Zelenskyy and Trump with creating the conditions for a “just and lasting peace” at a crucial moment.
“Ukraine is willing to do whatever it takes to stop this war,” Zelenskyy posted Saturday. “We need to be strong at the negotiating table.”
In response to the attacks, he wrote: “We want peace, and Russia demonstrates a desire to continue the war. If the whole world — Europe and America — is on our side, together we will stop” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump and Zelenskyy sitting down face-to-face also underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a proposal to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is “about 90% ready” — echoing a figure, and the optimism, that U.S. officials conveyed when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin earlier this month.
During the recent talks, the U.S. agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those offered to other members of NATO. The proposal came as Zelenskyy said he was prepared to drop his country’s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection that would be designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks.
Zelenskyy also spoke on Christmas Day with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed “certain substantive details" and cautioned “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and “the weeks ahead may also be intensive.”
The U.S. president has been working to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelenskyy and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Long gone are the days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted that he could resolve the fighting in a day.
After hosting Zelenskyy at the White House in October, Trump demanded that both Russia and Ukraine halt fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to keep the territory it has seized from Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said last week that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the Kremlin had already been in contact with U.S.
“It was agreed upon to continue the dialogue,” he said.
Putin has publicly said he wants all the areas in four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces haven’t captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.
The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO. It warned that it wouldn’t accept the deployment of any troops from members of the military alliance and would view them as a “legitimate target.”
Putin also has said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and give official status to the Russian language, demands he has made from the outset of the conflict.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told the business daily Kommersant this month that Russian police and national guard would stay in parts of Donetsk -– one of the two major areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbas region — even if they become a demilitarized zone under a prospective peace plan.
Ushakov cautioned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took into account Russian demands had been “worsened” by alterations proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.
Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin’s demands, making the case that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.
Kim reported from Washington and Morton from London. Associated Press writers Illia Novikov in Kyiv and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump greets Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago club, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump greets Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago club, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump greets Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago club, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump greets Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago club, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Karen Blake of Ft. Lauderdale, poses with a sign at the "Rally in Support of Ukraine" organized by the Ukrainian Association of Florida as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach, Fla., Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Jen Golbeck)
President Donald Trump waves as he departs Trump International Golf Club, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
A psychologist of a rescue team helps en elderly woman at the hospice which was damaged after a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, on Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Rescuers put fragments of a body of the victim into a plastic bag after Russian drone hit a multi-storey apartment building during massive missile and drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
President Donald Trump pumps his fist at Christmas Eve dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club, Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hold a news conference in Halifax, N.S. on Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025.(Riley Smith /The Canadian Press via AP)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a media conference at the EU Summit in Brussels, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
