In previous years, we’ve gotten just a taste of a brand new season before the first international break in September arrives. This year, however, has been different — and that is all by design. Once Juventus takes the field at the Allianz Stadium on Sunday night, it will the sixth time in all competitions that Luciano Spalletti’s squad has played a game before the first international break of the 2026-27 season arrives.
That game, specifically, comes against an old friend who’s at a new place.
But
it’s that club as a whole that sure does seem to give Juve a lot of trouble these past few years.
One final fixture before three weeks without club football awaits us all on Sunday evening. For Juventus, it’s the chance to see whether the five-goal Europa League opener was the start of something better or just a blip on the radar of more pressing problems once they return to tougher competition domestically. The task is, on paper, going to be a lot tougher at the Allianz Stadium, with Maurizio Sarri and his new-look Atalanta side rolling into Turin looking to right some wrongs of their own off the back of back-to-back losses.
Two teams who want to go into the international break — remember, it’s three weeks long as compared to the usual two, which means Juve won’t play again until Oct. 11 after this one — will be facing one another. They’re two teams who enter the weekend separated by all of one point and in eighth and 11th place, respectively, in case you actually care about the Serie A table after the first four games of the season.
But most importantly, this is Juventus trying to rebound domestically after last weekend’s brutal loss away to Sassuolo and try to show that Spalletti is maybe, just maybe, getting things back on track as he’s heard nothing but how his job could well already be at stake since the squad returned from Emilia-Romagna.
The injury situation is not anywhere close to being resolved — and won’t be even after the extended September international break that will roll into October. Plus, for the first time this season, Spalletti and Juve are coming off their first Thursday night fixture of the season, so they will have had less than 72 hours to recover since their 5-0 win over NEC Nijmegen in the Europa League opener.
Atalanta, as you can guess, will be a much bigger challenge than NEC proved to be. That doesn’t take a calcio expert to really figure out. Even though Atalanta are in the early days of their time with Sarri at the helm and had a summer transfer window in which they again sold some of their most valuable young assets, it’s an opponent that has given Juve fits over the last few years. They may be coming off back-to-back losses, but it’s Atalanta — and that means it’s an important fixture against a club that also wants to be pushing for a European place.
But here’s an interesting piece of statistical information about the two teams coming into Sunday evening’s matchup at the Allianz …
In case you don’t feel like doing the work to translate, here’s the basic summary: Atalanta, under Sarri have allowed the most shots in Serie A through the first four matchdays this season with 82. Juventus, on the other hand, have allowed the least amount of shots over the course of that same time period.
So what does this all mean?
If the stats tell us anything, there will be chances to be had for Juventus against Atalanta. And, along those lines, Juve’s ability to frustrate the living hell out of all of us in front of goal is going to be tested once again. Can they actually finish the chances they are likely going to get against Atalanta? Or will they be left to rue those chances like we’ve seen so many times before over the last few seasons?
The last thing Juventus need to see happen is to drop points once again and basically have the Italian media — and us around here — sit on another disappointing result during the next three weeks before they play again. The heat was already on Spalletti coming out of the loss to Sassuolo, so you have to believe that might be even worse if Juventus drop points against Atalanta on Sunday. And if they play poorly on top of that? Oh boy, what an interesting international break that we could have on our hands.
We know the win over NEC made things look like they’re off to a good start in the Europa League. Now we wait to see if that kind of midweek success can be carried over into Serie A when Juventus desperately need a good performance and a good result to go into the international break on. If they don’t do that, then who knows what the next couple of weeks will be like. If they win, though, then you’re feeling a lot better than you were seven days earlier.
Then again, you can’t really feel much worse at this point of the season with only a few games played after Juve did after watching Vasilije Adžić sink a stoppage-time winner right in front of a couple of players he was teammates with as recent as early August.
Let’s just hope they don’t repeat that for a little while. That sure would be nice, wouldn’t it?
TEAM NEWS
- Injuries, injuries and more injuries! Why? Because that’s just the ever-lasting theme of the 2026-27 season.
- The latest comes just a few hours ago as backup goalkeeper Kamil Grabara has suffered a torn ACL in his right knee after reporting a knee sprain in training. Grabara was fresh off his Juve debut in the Europa League opener on Thursday night — a game in which he recorded an assist on the first goal and then went on to get the clean sheet.
- With no Grabara for the rest of the season, it means Carlo Pinsoglio will serve as Juventus’ backup goalkeeper for the time being.
- Grabara is the latest name in what is becoming a long list of long-term injuries. It also includes: Kenan Yildiz, Khephren Thuram, Manuel Locatelli, Jérémie Boga, Jeff Ekhator and Juan Cabal.
- Andrea Cambiaso also looks unlikely to be available to face Atalanta after reportedly being limited to personalized training once again on Saturday.
- Luciano Spalletti did not hold a pre-match press conference this weekend, so therefore this section is now limited to the team news that is very obvious and we don’t have many hints in terms of potential lineup changes against Atalanta.
- While most of the starting lineup feels pretty safe to guess, there are three decisions that Spalletti will have to make: Nick Woltemade or Randal Kolo Muani, Pape Matar Sarr or Teun Koopmeiners, and Jhon Lucumí or Lloyd Kelly. Many of the predicted lineups in the Italian media believe Spalletti will stick with the 3-4-2-1 setup that he used in Juventus’ Europa League opener against NEC.
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
The 2026-27 season has already provided us with the sight of a lot players who we didn’t necessarily expect to be playing a lot of minutes actually getting a lot of minutes. That includes players who were out on loan last season and looked to be potentially on the way out this summer, only to stick around and be players that Spalletti has come to rely on — either by choice or because of the sudden injury crunch.
So I guess it’s only natural that Juventus are now looking to one of Cristiano Giuntoli’s former signings to be a guy who leads them over their sporting chief and the club that now employs him.
As he showed once again against NEC on Thursday night, Nico González is a chaos agent. He thrives off of it — and that’s not just because he steams around like a madman and brings as much energy as anybody not named Weston McKennie to this Juventus squad. (You know, of players who are currently healthy.)
Nico has been good since he has suddenly become a regular starter for Juventus. And if you didn’t expect him to be a starter all of a couple of weeks ago, that’s fine because you’re not the only one to think just that.
But Juventus need Nico right now. They really do — and there’s no escaping that.
In his short time back at Juventus, González has played about as well as they could have hoped. Has he been better than when he was here two seasons ago? I think so, but the sample size is still quite small, so we won’t make grand proclamations just yet. But this is a guy who was on the market all of a month ago, has come back from a short post-World Cup break and just stepped right in and gotten to work.
That work has included goals, it’s included pressing like a sicko and suddenly becoming an option behind the striker that actually makes a whole lot of sense as other areas of the field experience a shortage of options.
Now we see what Nico can do against an opponent in Atalanta that ain’t just gonna sit back and try and defend. That’s not how Sarri does things. And maybe it’s his chaotic nature that could thrive in a matchup like this one. He certainly is showing to be a valuable player for Spalletti these days (even if his jersey number is very much not something you would expect from an important attacking player).
MATCH INFO
When: Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026.
Where: Allianz Stadium, Turin, Italy.
Official kickoff time: 6 p.m. local time in Italy and across Europe, 5 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 12 p.m. Eastern time, 11 a.m. Central time, 9 a.m. Pacific time.
HOW TO WATCH
Television: TLN (Canada), TNT Sports 1 (United Kingdom); Sky Sport Uno, Sky Sport 251, Sky Sport Calcio (Italy).
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, CBS Sports Golazo Network, Peacock, (United States); DAZN Canada; fuboTV Canada (Canada); DAZN UK, HBO Max (United Kingdom); DAZN 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 Bluesky. Black & White & Read All Over’s match threads from your phone with the new SB Nation app. Commenting and interacting with your communities is easier than ever before with the Game Chat feature. The app is available currently in the U.S. on iOS and Android devices.
