My friends, we are out to see if recent history could very well end up repeating itself.
Let me set it all up with this: Three days after Juventus’ wild 4-4 draw against Inter Milan last October, the Bianconeri had a midweek fixture to quickly shift their focus to. It wasn’t against anybody really of note, with a struggling Parma side making their way to the Allianz Stadium for some midweek fun — or what we thought could be fun considering how much they had not been playing well at the time.
Juventus
ended up dropping points, and it turned out to be one of the 100s of draws that the team recorded last season.
So now, we fast forward back to the present time in which Juventus are coming off a wild win over Inter at the weekend. The midweek matchup in which they quickly shift their focus to isn’t against a potential relegation battler. Instead, it’s their Champions League opener against Borussia Dortmund, a team they were playing against in a summertime friendly just a month ago. Tuesday night’s matchup at the Stadium will see Juventus look to keep this early-season success going, with Dortmund being looked at as just as much of a test right out of the gate in Europe as PSV Eindhoven was a year ago.
(Of course, we hope this will be the only time Juventus play Dortmund in the Champions League this season if we’re using the PSV thread as a comp for things. Unless it’s in, like, the UCL semifinal or something. Then it’s OK.)
As we head into the second year of the Champions League using the league phase format, it’s now more of a common knowledge just how volatile things can be if a result or two don’t go your way. We can all remember just how important the live table became during Juve’s last couple of league phase fixtures considering things were changing so much over the course of the 90 minutes on the field. And even with that big win over PSV to start things out in the league phase last season, it’s not like it ended up being a sign of things to come when the seventh and eighth league phase fixtures arrived and Juve were toward the bottom of clubs who were sent into the play-off round.
If that first experience in the league phase taught us anything, it’s probably this: just try and get into the top eight as much as possible. Avoid the play-off round. Just don’t even risk your entire European future for the season coming down to 180 minutes and added two more games onto an already busy schedule as we approach the late-winter portion of the season.
Of course, when it comes to Juventus playing Borussia Dortmund, the fact they just played a friendly against one another on Aug. 10 is an interesting subplot to all of this. How much can you take out of it and apply to this matchup? I don’t really know. It’s a friendly in comparison to the first Champions League fixture of the season, which comes with its own unique bit of intensity. So as much as we can say Juventus played well in said friendly — which they did on top of simply getting the win —
Dortmund, to their credit, have played fairly well the last couple of weeks after opening their Bundesliga slate with a 3-3 draw against St. Pauli in which they blew a 3-1 lead in the final five minutes. Like Juve, Dortmund currently sit in second place domestically, with — shocker — Bayern Munich already setting the pace out front.
Juventus and Dortmund last played a competitive fixture in 2015 when Carlos Tévez scored that banger of a goal in Germany to get the ball rolling and help the Bianconeri continue their march toward the Champions League final.
For Juventus, going from the emotional roller coaster of Saturday’s win over Inter to now ramping it all back up for the Champions League opener is quite the unique situation. The worry, as you might expect, is for some sort of physical and/or emotional letdown considering what happened just a couple of days ago. But when it comes to how Juve manager Igor Tudor is feeling about things coming out of the victorious weekend in the Derby d’Italia, this is how he’s viewing things as he said during his pre-match press conference on Monday:
“I had two main takeaways against Inter. We played against the strongest team in Serie A in terms of squad potential and we won without playing at our best. This second point should make us reflect on our true value and what we could and should have done better. We were also missing some important players for various reasons, including international commitments and injuries.”
(Source: juventus.com)
Most of those same players who were out injured against Inter will miss the Dortmund fixture, so Tudor will pretty much have the same squad available to him that he did over the weekend. But if he’s feeling like Juventus can beat a good team like Inter and still not be close to their best, then it’s a sign about how he’s feeling regarding his squad’s overall potential. And just like against Inter, facing Dortmund are going to be another good measuring stick to see just where Tudor’s squad is at when it comes to this point of the season.
Just like against Inter, we’re about to find some things out about this team. And for the first time this season, we’re going to see what they’re capable of on short rest after an incredibly emotional win, too.
TEAM NEWS
- Just as was the case over the weekend, Francisco Conceição won’t be available due to muscle fatigue that caused him to return from international duty with Portugal early.
- As he said at his introductory press conference last week, Deadline Day signing Edon Zhegorva is still working toward full fitness and won’t be ready until after the weekend trip to Hellas Verona at the earliest.
- Fabio Miretti is also doubt as he continues to work his way back from the injury he suffered in preseason.
- Both Conceição and Miretti did not training with the group on Monday.
- To the surprise of nobody, Arek Milik — who hasn’t played since the final game of the 2023-24 season — was not included in Juventus’ Champions League squad for the league phase.
- Even though this isn’t Serie A and his two-game suspension is now over, it’s safe to say that Andrea Cambiaso will be well rested as he likely retakes his spot in the starting lineup on Tuesday night. This is also to serve as a reminder that Cambiaso scored both goals against Dortmund in the friendly the two teams played last month.
- When asked about the morale of the squad coming out of the big win over Inter at the weekend, Tudor said: “The squad is doing well in every respect.”
- A nice little tidbit coming into this one: Tudor will become only the fourth person to both play for and then manage Juvenrtus in the Champions League, joining a list that includes Ciro Ferrara, Antonio Conte and most recently Andrea Pirlo.
- This will be the first game in the Champions League that Tudor will coach since the group stage in 2022 when he was manager at Marseille. They only won two of their six fixtures, losing the other four and finishing bottom of a group that also included Tottenham, Sporting and Eintracht Frankfurt.
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
Coming off a huge win over Inter, there’s a lot of directions we can go with this. The vibes are good, there’s a positive energy coming from this team and obviously you’re going to get a lot of good performers when you start the season with three straight wins and an emotional Derby d’Italia victory.
So what about somebody who was a vital player in the late-game comeback? You know, the guy who was just a few feet away from where his older brother scored the go-ahead goal and then celebrated like no other a little over five minutes later when he scored to tie things up? Yeah, that guy. I like that guy. Let’s discuss him.
Khephren Thuram is Juventus’ most talented midfielder. I don’t think there’s an argument for somebody else. No offense to Manuel Locatelli, but you look at Thuram and feel like he can only get better from his current form is — and that’s an enticing thought for the future regarding a player who clearly loves where he’s at. (And so does his fashion icon father, who did a thing or two in Turin during his playing career.)
So, with that said, it’s easy to think that Juventus need Thuram at his best if they want to win these big fixtures during the Champions League league phase. So far this season, he’s been rather good, too.
Thuram currently leads Serie A in tackles. He’s got the most successful dribbles on the Juventus roster by somebody not named Kenan Yildiz. His game-tying goal against Inter provided Juventus with the jolt of energy they needed to get the late-game comeback truly going just when it looked like they might not get points.
Plus, he’s just really freakin’ cool.
We are seeing Yildiz take the step up to begin the season. That could very well be the case for Thuram if he continues this way. And there’s no better way to prove that than in a big Champions League fixture in which Juventus need to keep the good times going.
MATCH INFO
When: Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025.
Where: Allianz Stadium, Turin, Italy.
Official kickoff time: 9 p.m. local time in Italy and across Europe, 8 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 3 p.m. Eastern time, 2 p.m. Central time, 12 p.m. Pacific time.
HOW TO WATCH
Television: TUDN USA, UniMas (United States): TLN (Canada); TNT Sports 2 (United Kingdom); Sky Sport 4K (Italy).
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video, Univision NOW, TUDN.com, TUDN app (United States); DAZN Canada; Amazon Prime Video (Canada); DAZN UK (United Kingdom); NOW TV (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 Bluesky. If you haven’t already, join the community on Black & White & Read All Over, and join in the discussion below.
