Following the first Big Match of the 2026-27 season, Juventus are still very much short-handed and now on the cusp of the fixture list getting very, very busy. The start of the Europa League is on the horizon, and that means the Thursday-Sunday grind is nearly upon us (for at least one week before the three-week September international break arrives).
So what is the thing you maybe don’t want to see show up on the schedule before all of that?
Ah, that’s right — a trip to a stadium in which some incredibly
frustrating results and/or performances have taken place over the last half-decade (or more).
Yep, it’s time to make the trip to the Mapei Stadium again, my friends. You know, the site of where Juventus have lost two of their last three meetings with Sassuolo, albeit with a lot of the players from those previous misgivings now playing their football somewhere else. But when it comes to this latest trip to Emilia-Romagna on Sunday night, it comes at a time in which Juventus manager Luciano Spalletti is dealing with quite the injury crisis. As they step onto the bus to begin their journey to Sassuolo, Spalletti could be looking at a squad list where as many as nine senior team players are out injured, including the most recent one that involves captain Manuel Locatelli going under the knife to repair his meniscus.
That is not what you want to hear as the schedule starts to get busy — for a week at least before the first international break of the season arrives and we then get to sweat out potential injuries involving players on national team duty for the better part of three weeks. Nearly a third of Juventus’ roster is hurt right now, and that is something that is the last thing you want to see happen as we sit here about to see Matchday 4 take place.
Seriously, it’s been all of three weeks into the new season and the number of injured players is pushing double digits already. That’s a lot! That’s something I can’t remember happening so early into a new season — and I’ve been writing about this kind of stuff for quite a while now around these parts.
Yet, we keep rolling. Or try to. And that is the message that Spalletti is understandably trying to convey right now.
“(Locatelli’s) absence, though, spreads responsibility across everyone because he’s always attentive to everything,” Spalletti said during Saturday’s pre-match press conference. “This week I’ve seen a team that’s very willing to fight against whatever it comes up against, a team that’s trained very well.”
So what does that all mean?
“We have to go out and win games,” Spalletti continued “We have to impose ourselves by playing like Juventus and raising our level even further. We have to go beyond anything that happens to us.”
So now it’s a third provincial side in the first four games on the schedule. Sassuolo have not been good defensively so far this season, allowing five goals in their opening three games. And when you look at the teams on Sassuolo’s schedule thus far, they’ve looked a little like this:
- A rebuilding Atalanta side under Maurizio Sarri to open the season.
- A not very good Torino whose only win this season is against a Fiorentina side that has already fired its manager.
- Seventh-place (!!!) Frosinone.
That is not exactly a murderer’s row of opponents for Sassuolo. Not by a long shot, folks.
All of this to say, when you’re a struggling striker like Randal Kolo Muani is, this looks like the potential kind of get-right game that you’ve been hoping for ever since things started to get a little too frustrating for you. Or maybe it’s the kind of trap game for a short-handed Juventus that sees them drop points in a frustrating kind of fashion like we’ve seen form them all too often over the last few years.
But what I do know is this: Heading to the Mapei is always going to be tricky. I say that even after Juventus went to Sassuolo last season and throughly beat them 3-0 back in January in their first matchup against the Bianconeri since coming back to Serie A. You are never going to fool me, Mapei Stadium! I know how you work!
And with Juventus dealing with the kind of injuries that they are, too? I really have no idea what kind of shape they’re in at the moment.
So that means there could be plenty of uncertainty involving Juve entering Sunday night’s test. With the Europa League waiting on the schedule a few days from now, this might have been the kind of fixture where Spalletti rotated a little bit and given some minutes to guys who hadn’t played much to begin the season. But because of all the injuries, that’s not possible.
In all likelihood, this is who Juve will have to roll with for the next eight days before the international break arrives and we get to worry about injuries happen but in national team kits. Maybe a couple of guys come back midweek, but the starting lineup probably isn’t going to change much unless even more injuries take place.
Nobody wants that, though! For at least one week, let’s just hope the injury list stays where it’s at. And, at the very least, we can talk about Juventus getting back to their winning ways despite all of those injuries that Spalletti is having to deal with right now.
TEAM NEWS
- Injuries, injuries and more injuries. More than last week! Who thought that was possible? Nope, not me — unless you remember that there’s some seriously bad juju going through Continassa right now when it comes to players actually staying healthy.
- The long-term injuries are: Kenan Yildiz, Manuel Locatelli, Khephren Thuram, Jérémie Boga and Jeff Ekhator.
- The other injuries include: Juan Cabal, Weston McKennie and Andrea Cambiaso. Spalletti left a bit of a door open for McKennie and Cambiaso to be called up, but said it is “unlikely” they make it to face Sassuolo.
- Cambiaso, who has been out since the win over Parma on Aug. 29, will undergo a final fitness test on Sunday morning ahead of the team’s departure to Emilia-Romagna, according to Spalletti.
- With Locatelli out, Gleison Bremer will be serving as Juventus’ captain.
- While those two may still be out, Spalletti said that summer signing Pape Matar Sarr will be called up for the trip to Sassuolo — which, considering the current state of injuries involving midfielders, is a nice development.
- Even with Locatelli out, Spalletti said that “nothing changes” when it comes to the different systems he decides to use with his tactical setup.
- While he didn’t specifically say that Nick Woltemade will be in the starting lineup, Spalletti basically declared that the big German striker will “be involved tomorrow in one way or another.”
- With all the injuries in midfield, Augusto Owusu is expected to be called up from the Next Gen squad to face Sassuolo (and for the time being with Thuram and Locatelli out until 2027).
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
When the week began, this was going to be a place to do something I don’t necessarily like to do in these previews — talk about a player I have just spotlighted a couple of weeks earlier. But as much as the new No. 9 at Juventus is struggling to find the back of the net to begin his second stint in Turin, all of the injuries have left Mister Spalletti with a little bit of a roster crunch.
Or, in the case of the midfield, basically forced him to play a double pivot that we haven’t really seen much at all.
Enter another one of the 2024 summer signings looking to have 2026 be the year he gets back to his best.
During his pre-match press conference, Spalletti was incredibly complimentary of a certain Dutchman by the name of Teun Koopmeiners. It is that same Koopmeiners who will be paired with Douglas Luiz against Sassuolo this weekend. And that is the same Douglas Luiz who Koopmeiners will be looking to replicate when it comes to making the start of the 2026-27 season be a new beginning of sorts.
So what did Spalletti said about Koopmeiners? Here ya go …
“With Koopmeiners, there’s now a deeper understanding. The difference for players is obviously having more minutes to play. He’s liberated now, and much more relaxed. He’s a complete player and I expect a great performance from him.”
Those are some classic words from Spalletti right there. Koopmeiners “liberated,” “more relaxed” and now with “a deeper understanding” of things? Well, well, well … let’s see how all of this plays out.
In his last two games, Koopmeiners has scored a goal and provided the game-tying assist on Federico Gatti’s game-tying header against Milan. That may not seem like much, but this is a player in Koopmeiners who didn’t record a goal or assist in Serie A all of last season. So, in a way, he’s already doing better than he was last year? It’s a very low bar, but the stats are the stats, folks!
But with Locatelli out for the foreseeable future — and as much as five or six months potentially — Juventus need Koopmeiners to show signs that he is, as Spalletti put it, “liberated” from his struggles of the past two years. He is not the same kind of midfielder as Locatelli, obviously, but at this point Juventus just need some stability in the center of the park more than anything. How he teams with Douglas Luiz will be big, of course, but just what Spalletti actually has Koopmeiners doing will be quite interesting to see.
And if it goes well, then it will be a good start to life without Juventus’ captain for the next few months.
MATCH INFO
When: Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026.
Where: Mapei Stadium, Sassuolo, Italy.
Official kickoff time: 8:45 p.m. local time in Italy and across Europe, 7:45 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, 1:45 p.m. Central time, 11:45 a.m. Pacific time.
HOW TO WATCH
Television: CBS Sports Network, Telemundo (United States); TLN (Canada), TNT Sports 1 (United Kingdom).
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, Peacock, Telemundo Deportes En Vivo (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.
