For the second Serie A matchday in a row coming out of the 2026-27 season’s first international break, Juventus will be facing an opponent that has overwhelming over-performed their preseason expectations. The catch is that unlike this weekend’s opponent, nobody is expecting Cagliari, despite their very good start to the season, to hang around the European places once the midway point of the Serie A calendar arrives.
With each passing week, though, that line of thinking is a little different when
it comes to Lazio.
When you look at the Serie A table through the first six games of the season, seeing defending champion Inter Milan again in the top spot is not much of a surprise. The team tied with them on points? Nope, nobody expected Lazio to be up there — especially with a new manager and a roster that didn’t exactly see many upgrades arrive during the summer transfer window.
Yet there they are, with Rino Gattuso snarling as he is want to do along the way.
Juventus will be the latest team to try and do what only one other club has done so far this season — prevent Lazio from getting a win and continuing their impressive start to the new campaign. Sunday night’s matchup in Turin comes at a time in which Luciano Spalletti’s squad will be coming off a win in Europe yet also looking to get back to their winning ways domestically. Sound familiar? Yeah, because it’s basically the same kind of situation we saw the last time Juve had a quick turnaround this season after a Europa League fixture. That proved to be a win at the Allianz Stadium over Atalanta, who just so happen to employ Lazio’s most recent manager before Gattuso took over this summer.
Can Juventus do the same against Lazio? Who in the hell knows.
Well, it’s pretty easy to figure out that Lazio are in much better form than Atalanta were as they make their trip to Turin. And a lot like Juve’s last Serie A opponent, Cagliari, Lazio’s recipe success so far this season has not always been pretty, but one that just sees them picking up three points more often than not.
Lazio aren’t wowing when it comes to tons of possession and gaudy passing numbers — they’re middle of the road in terms of their numbers on that front. They aren’t racking up shot after shot after shot, averaging all of 13.5 shots per game, good for 12th in Serie A so far this season. But they’re scoring, with 11 goals — eight of which have come from open play — through their first six games. And a lot like Cagliari, they’ve been able to prevent opposing teams from scoring on them, allowing their top goal-scoring options to do their thing.
Now, I think most aren’t expecting Lazio to be around the top of the table come the springtime. The Opta supercomputerstill isn’t totally buying into their hot start and is predicting that they finish in sixth come the end of the season. (Even with Juve’s struggles so far this season, that same supercomputer has Juve finishing in third place — which, based on what happened at the end of last year, doesn’t always mean it’s going to be accurate.) So, in that sense, Lazio are an opponent that are over-performing what many people have expected of them.
But, if they can keep it going, then it’s just another potential club to try and fend off in the race for the top four.
Juventus need the win on that front. Plus they just need to actually get a win coming off the comeback victory over Celta Vigo on Thursday night because consistently winning games has been one of Juve’s biggest issues both this season, last season and the previous couple of seasons before that. Yes, there are still injuries to multiple important players who would certainly be starting Sunday night’s game, but getting a win is needed to try and get some kind of positive momentum rather than the continuous start-stop nature of how this season has been so far.
If Juventus can do that — on their home field, let’s not forget — against one of the most in-form teams in Serie A so far this season, then it’s a sign that they could be turning a corner (with the final verdict still to be determined). Or maybe just another step in the cycle that they can’t seem to get out of and can be described with one word and one word only: stagnation.
Either way, Sunday will tell us a lot about Juventus as they get ready to complete the first third of this big nine-game stretch following the extend international break. It could be good, it could be bad (or more of the same). But this is a challenge that maybe we didn’t think would be a second-place team coming to Turin before the season kicked off in August. So on that front, it’s an even bigger game than it usually is against these guys.
TEAM NEWS
- Just how quick of a turnaround is this game? According to Spalletti at his pre-match press conference, Juventus didn’t get back from Spain after their win against Celta Vigo until 4:30 a.m. on Friday. So less than 72 hours later, Juve have one of their biggest domestic games of the season to date.
- Of course, Spalletti himself won’t be on the sidelines for this one after he picked up a red card due to his post-game “altercation” with Cagliari manager Fabio Pisacane. Therefore, it will be Marco Domenichini, Spalletti’s assistant manager, calling the shots from the sideline. (With some help from Spalletti up in the stands surely.)
- Juventus will have one more player coming off the injury list this weekend, with Spalletti saying Jérémie Boga will be available off the bench against Lazio. Spalletti said that Boga, who has been out since Juve’s draw with Milan in early September, “has about half an hour in his legs.”
- That means the injury list looks a little something like this in terms of who won’t be available against Lazio: Kenan Yildiz, Manuel Locatelli, Khephren Thuram, Jeff Ekhator and Kamil Grabara.
- Spalletti said that Edon Zhegrova, who has had a positive start to the season and was a big part in Juve’s second-half comeback against Celta Vigo on Thursday, could get the start in Sunday’s game. However, a condition of Zhegrova starting is “we need to find the right balance within the team, especially when we field several attacking players,” Spalletti said.
- The midfield pivot of Douglas Luiz and Pape Matar Sarr is expected to be the one Spalletti goes with just as he did last weekend against Cagliari. (Sorry, Teun.)
- After serving the remainder of his suspension left from his time in Brazil, new backup goalkeeper Neto will be available this weekend. He was also on the bench for the win over Celta Vigo on Thursday.
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
We all waited for Randal Kolo Muani to show signs that he might have finally shaken off the rust a bit and started to resemble the player he was when he first joined Juventus the first time around in 2025.
Well, in his last five games in all competitions, Kolo Muani has five goal contributions.
Could we be turning a little bit of a corner after a tough re-introduction to life in Turin?
The signs that Kolo Muani is starting to look like his old self again are starting to be there. The catch in this is that it has come during situations in which he has also been paired with Nick Woltemade up front — something that Spalletti has chosen not to do from the opening whistle just yet. And, if you are to believe what he said during his pre-match press conference, doesn’t sound like something he will be doing against Lazio to start with.
“Whether to start Woltemade and Kolo Muani is one of the decisions we’ll assess over the next few hours, also taking into account how the match might develop,” Spallett said on Saturday.
Of course, when you’ve got only two natural strikers on your roster, you certainly like the possibility of bringing one on for the other or going with a two-striker attack as a change in the second half. Like Spalletti said, how things develop as the game goes on is something he likes to have in his back pocket. But, as we’re clearly seeing, Kolo Muani has played much better with Woltemade on the field with him rather than sitting on the bench, thus usually resulting in him being more isolated and not as free to roam as he might otherwise be.
So there is that and something we won’t know about until an hour before kickoff when the lineups are announced.
But the overlying positivity is that Kolo Muani is simply looking like more of a threat than he did during his first few weeks back at Juventus. He still has the questionable miss left in him like when he smashed one off the crossbar against Cagliari that could have been the game-winner, but on the whole his performance level has been a good improvement from where he was the opening weeks of the season.
A good five-game stretch won’t be the determining factor in a lot of people’s mind about Kolo Muani and his ability to lead the line for Juventus, but it’s a step in the right direction.
If anything, just keep feeding him crosses toward the back post late in the game. It worked against Cagliari. It worked against Celta Vigo. Who’s down to see him make it three in a row? I know I can get on that train.
MATCH INFO
When: Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026.
Where: Allianz Stadium, Turin, 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: Telemundo (United States); TLN (Canada), TNT Sports 1 (United Kingdom).
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, CBS Sports Golazo Network, 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. Engage with 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.
