The waiting game for Luciano Spalletti and Juventus to agree to a contract to become the club’s new manager has turned into a waiting game as to when he will take control of his new squad.
It was thought
to be Wednesday. Then Thursday. Now, it might be even later than that.
According to Sky Italia’s Gianluca Di Marzio late Wednesday night, Spalletti is expected to arrive in Turin on Thursday morning and sign his contract — which is set to be for the rest of the 2025-26 season with an option for the 2026-27 campaign — while then meeting with his new bosses. The thing is, though, the timetable in terms of actually when he gets things officially signed and when Juve will have their recovery training session following Wednesday night’s win over Udinese just might not match up, meaning Spalletti won’t hold his first training session with his new team until Friday.
Do the math and that’s all of one day of training at Juventus before the squad heads to Cremona for their Saturday night matchup against Cremonese. (Who, by the way, also won on Wednesday night and are right behind Juventus in the Serie A table.)
Either way, Spalletti likely won’t be presented to the Italian media as Juventus’ manager until Friday, which would conveniently serve as the normal day for a pre-match press conference no matter who the coach would be.
So, again, we wait.
Tudor was fired on Monday. Juventus basically agreed to a deal with Spalletti on Tuesday night. Now, after watching Juventus end their eight-game winless run on Wednesday, we wait for Spalletti to take control of this team beyond just signing his contract.
Fun, ain’t it?
But this is the result of trying to get a new manager in during one of the busiest times of the fall months. The plan was always going to be to have Massimo Brambilla in charge for the Udinese game and then turn things over to the official Tudor replacement. Just how quickly that replacement came in and was signed to a contract was going to determine how many training sessions they had with the Juve squad ahead of Saturday’s game against Cremonese.
So, if you were hoping that Spalletti would have multiple training sessions at Continassa before facing one of the biggest surprises of this early Serie A season, it looks like those hopes are probably going to be dashed.
