Even though Juventus still have 90 minutes of football to play and an international break to sit through, they now know they will be without one of their more important players for next month’s Derby d’Italia against Inter Milan at the Allianz Stadium.
It was announced Tuesday that Juve fullback/wingback Andrea Cambiaso has been suspended two games following his straight red against Parma this past weekend. This comes as no surprise considering the last few Juventus players to get red cards at the end of
last season, Kenan Yildiz and then Pierre Kalulu, also recived two-game bans for the same kind of action that Cambiaso did when he swung his arm out at Parma’s Mathias Løvik with less than 10 minutes to go in regular time during Sunday’s 2-0 season-opening win at the Allianz.
That means Cambiaso will miss this weekend’s first away fixture of the 2025-26 season against Genoa at the Marassi and, more importantly, the Sept. 13 matchup against Inter coming out of the September international break.
None of this is surprising. A two-game ban was always the most likely outcome, with many of us around here expecting it in the minutes following Cambiaso going down the tunnel after being shown the straight red in the 83rd minute this past Sunday night.
So, the question now is which way will Juve manager Igor Tudor go in filling the void left by Cambiaso being suspended?
We’re still five days away from Juventus’ trip to Cambiaso’s hometown of Genoa, but La Gazzetta dello Sport thinks that it will be the other natural wingback for the left wing, Filip Kostic, coming in for his suspended teammate. That feels like the most logical pick considering Tudor’s formation is a fit for Kostic just as the same way Max Allegri’s 3-5-2 was when he first arrived in Turin.
But could somebody like Weston McKennie become an option on the left wing? We know he’s got plenty of experience at Juventus as a wingback, albeit on the opposite side of the field considering Kostic was ever present during Allegri’s final season in Turin.
Either way, the limited depth that Tudor has out wide at the wingback position is already going to be tested over the next couple of weeks — and that’s not what you want to hear when you’re just starting up a season when depth was never going to be all that plentiful to begin with.
