Juventus have played the first 180 minutes of a very busy summer friendly schedule. (If only the summer mercato was as busy as the team will be over the next couple of weeks, right? I’ll let you decide that for yourself.) And because of a handful of players having staggered returns from their respective post-World Cup breaks and now a few other players having to deal with preseason ailments, Juve manager Luciano Spalletti has had to fill the void with the limited number of in-house options he has.
Or, as we saw over the weekend against Standard Liège, with academy players who might normally only see minutes late in friendlies as the senior players build up their stamina. Spalletti rolled out a starting lineup on Saturday that was full of primavera and Next Gen players — a good opportunity for those same teenagers but also a sign of where this team currently is as players work their way back into the squad.
Some of those youngsters, in no particular order, to appear — and even make a start — in Juventus’ first two friendlies of the summer have been:
- Adin Ličina
- Augusto Owusu
- Destiny Elimoghale
- Justin Oboavwoduo
- Arman Durmiši
All of those players have either played minutes for the Juve Next Gen or are about to in a few weeks when the Serie C season gets underway on Aug. 23-24. Some of them have been with Juventus for a couple of years (or longer), while others have joined within the last 12 months and are still very much newbies and probably trying to get familiar with everything Turin has to offer.
Some have played well. Some have had moments but overall showed that they’re still not ready for senior level football. Most of them have shown that they are, in fact, still very much teenagers and players that age who have barely played at this level make mistakes that you probably expect them to make.
Every summer we get a glimpse of these young academy players. It was just a few years ago when Kenan Yildiz was in their situation and trying to make a good first impression with Max Allegri. Now, with Spalletti, these five players are trying to do the same type of thing so that they could potentially get senior level minutes both in the remaining friendlies Juventus have on the schedule and then at some point in the next few months when the fixtures count for real.
So, all of this means that the Juventus Question of the Day is this: Which one of the youngsters to appear in those first two friendlies of the summer has impressed you the most?
