We already knew new Juventus manager was going to be without Juventus’ best defender when he made his managerial debut at the club this weekend against Cremonese. Upon Juve’s departure for Cremona on Friday
evening, we found out Spalletti will be without the Bianconeri’s best attacking player, too.
Juventus star attacker Kenan Yildiz was not included in the traveling squad for Saturday night’s game against Cremonese — a matchup of seventh place facing eighth place — due to his knee injury that saw him start on the bench against Lazio in what proved to be Igor Tudor’s final game as manager in Turin. While he only played in the second half at the Stadio Olimpico, Yildiz played the entire game and score from the penalty spot all of three days later in Juventus’ win over Udinese that ended their eight-game winless run. Because of that, the hope was that the minor knee issue that Tudor said was bother Yildiz last week was a thing of the past.
Turns out it isn’t — and he won’t be available to Spalletti in his first game as Juve manager because of it.
Lloyd Kelly is also an injury absence for Saturday night’s game due to injury. Same goes for the usual players who were out midweek against Udinese: Gleison Bremer, Juan Cabal, Carlo Pinsoglio and (of course) Arek Milik.
The full squad list for Juve’s game against Cremonese is as follows:
Welcome to Juventus, Luciano. Your first game will be without Gleison Bremer. Your first game will now be without Yildiz as well. We wish you the best because those are two very important players to not have at your disposal right out of the gate as you try and get this thing turned around despite having all of one training session with your new squad before heading to Cremona for the weekend.
The added bonus in all of this is the simple fact that we have no idea how Spalletti is going to line up against Cremonese on Saturday night. Will he do as Massimo Brambilla did with limited training time following Tudor’s firing and just keep the three-man defense? Will he go with what he used most often at Napoli and switch to a four-man backline? Will that be a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1? We just don’t know!
But what we do know is that Juve are not as good of a team without Yildiz as compared to when he’s on the field. Let’s just hope this knee issue doesn’t linger because the last thing Spalletti needs is to have both Bremer and Yildiz — his clear-cut top two players on this roster — out for extended periods of time.
