Twelve months ago, Juventus entered the new season with barely any new arrivals. The roster that Max Allegri had was very much the same group that he had the season before, with very little movement actually taking place on the transfer market due to the very obvious lack of funds available.
Last summer’s mercato ... yeah, not in the same galaxy as this current one.
New manager. New style of play. New squad. Well ... almost.
That’s what makes Monday night’s season opener against newly-promoted Como and head coach Cesc Fabregas such interesting affair. Yes, it is the first official match in which Juventus will play under Thiago Motta, but it comes with the very large and obvious caveat that the roster the Brazilian-Italian will call up is very much not a finished product. There are still important signings to take place over the course of the next week and a half before the summer transfer window closes and we can actually see what Motta has to work with. But, for now, Juventus are about to open their season knowing full well that their squad is still waiting on at least two important signings that will hopefully be done very, very soon.
The games don’t wait for your squad to be complete, though.
Cristiano Giuntoli and Motta have known for weeks when the season was going to begin. And even with that season opener being less than 24 hours from now, Juventus will be going into it with key transfer targets still not signed and not much depth whatsoever because so many players have been frozen out of the squad.
It’s quite the dynamic to take into your first game of the season, and a lot has been made about Giuntoli’s attempt to totally remake the roster within the span of one transfer window. It was always going to be ambitious as all hell, but now we’re finding out the pitfalls that comes with doing such a big task over just a couple of months. The early business that set a nice tone early in the summer has been replaced by, at least from a lot of those on the outside looking in, more than just a little bit of doubt about where this mercato will end and how things will look in a couple of weeks.
But, thankfully, Monday night will bring something else to talk about in the middle of August.
Ah, that certainly will be a change, won’t it? Well, that is if Juventus play well in Motta’s first official game on the sidelines in front of the home crowd in Turin.
Juventus and Como have only played two times in Serie A. It was so long ago that the guy writing this first preview of the season was still in high school when it took place. The last matchup, which came in February of 2003, included the following in Juve’s 3-1 win over Como:
- An own goal off a cross from Pavel Nedved.
- A tidy finish from Marco Di Vaio off a brilliant through ball into the box from Nedved.
- A header from Mauro Camoranesi two minutes before halftime that benefited from a Como’s goalkeeper being incredibly indecisive in his penalty area.
So yeah, it’s been a while since these two clubs last played against each other.
Como, unlike Juventus, has actually played a competitive game this season. It was in the Coppa Italia — yes, you read that right, the 2024-25 edition of the Coppa has already started — against Andrea Pirlo and Sampdoria last weekend at the Marassi. Let’s check to see how that went for Cesc and Co., shall we?
Ouch! That’s rough!
But, as we’ve already seen this weekend, big clubs have been susceptible to dropping points right out of the gate against mid- or lower-table teams. Inter Milan dropped points in their season opener against Genoa on Saturday. AC Milan would have lost their season opener a couple of hours later if not for a late, late comeback against Torino at the San Siro to pick up a point. Napoli absolutely stunk up the Bentigodi in Antonio Conte’s debut. Heck, go ahead and throw Fiorentina in there and how they dropped points against another one of the newly-promoted sides, Parma, in Serie A’s first matchup of the 2024-25 campaign.
So, that’s just the long way of saying Juventus can’t afford to take Como lightly no matter what the current state of Motta’s squad currently is. They must, as our old buddy Max would say all the time, respect the opponent.
No matter if it’s a 4-2-3-1 or 4-1-4-1 that Motta rolls out against Como or how shorthanded the squad still very much is, it’s the dawn of a new day in Turin. Who knows what the roster will look like when the transfer window is closed, who knows what things will be like a few months from now once said squad is playing every four days and the current lack of depth might be burning them badly — there’s just still so many unknowns about this team even though the games count for real now.
But at the very least we know that Juventus are back. And let’s just hope that it doesn’t resemble anything close to the final four months of last season. That was ... yeah, not good.
TEAM NEWS
- Fabio Miretti, who may or may not be close to a loan move to Genoa, is still out injured after breaking a bone in his foot in training earlier this month.
- Vasilije Adžić is out injured with a hamstring injury.
- Arek Milik, who reportedly wants to stay at Juventus despite the club trying to sell him, is still out with the knee injury he picked up in June that forced him to miss Euro 2024 earlier this summer.
- One player who has been expected to be sold all summer but is now back in the squad is Weston McKennie, who has been training with the rest of the out-of-the-project group up until a couple of days ago. Motta describe McKennie as “a useful player for us.”
- Others, like Federico Chiesa, are not going to be called up for the season opener against Como — which, based on Motta’s comments on Sunday, isn’t a surprise but still a disappointment.
- Motta said he will call up 19 players to face Como — which, considering three of those spots are likely going to be goalkeepers, that means a pretty thin bench.
- Motta will pick his starting lineup “on merit,” adding that “whoever starts and whoever comes on has earned their place on the pitch.”
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
With so many new players on the roster, there’s a lot of directions we can go with this one. But, for the sake of making things easy on yours truly, the pick will be somebody who was around last season but has one very noticeable thing different going into the 2024-25 campaign.
Like, say, a new jersey number.
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By now, you’ve all seen that Kenan Yildiz is Juventus’ new No. 10 even though the guy who wore the No. 10 last season is still technically under contract with Juventus but not playing in anything competitive any time soon as the appeals process plays out.
With the new jersey number comes great expectations. And those are on top of the expectations that are already surrounding Yildiz as he gets set to take on a much bigger role this season as compared to his first year with the Juventus senior squad. That will be the case no matter who Juve end up signing before the summer transfer window comes to an end, but certainly against Como there’s going to be a very large void to be filled with the hopes that Yildiz can do that.
Knowing that there is no Teun Koopmeiners, no Federico Chiesa, no Nico Gonzalez and pretty much only Timothy Weah to play on the opposite wing, a lot of the creativity up front will likely fall on Yildiz’s large but still very young shoulders against Como and until the reinforcements arrive. Against a newly-promoted side that is going to be playing at the Allianz for the first time ever, who knows how they’re going to set things up.
No matter what, though, there will be a major focus on Yildiz simply because he’s been handed a new contract and the most famous number Juventus has to offer just a couple of days before the season and well before his 20th birthday. It’s a big day for Juve as they begin this new era with their new manager, but it’s also a new era when it comes to Yildiz being a huge piece to this team’s success both on Monday night and going forward for what is hopefully a long, long time.
MATCH INFO
When: Monday, Aug. 19, 2024.
Where: Allianz Stadium, Turin, Italy.
Official kickoff time: 8:45 p.m. in Italy and the Central European time zone, 7:45 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, 11:45 a.m. Pacific time.
HOW TO WATCH
Television: No channels available over the air in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or Italy.
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, CBS Sports Golazo Network (United States); fuboTV Canada (Canada); DAZN Italy, Sky Go Italia (Italy).
Other live viewing options can be found here, and as always, you can also follow along with us live and all the stupid things we say on Twitter. If you haven’t already, join the community on Black & White & Read All Over, and join in the discussion below.