For the third time in the span of a week, Juventus will have a different manager on the sideline barking out instructions to the 11 players on the field. Of course, that’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but it just shows you how quickly the fixtures are coming at Juventus regardless of their managerial situation.
But after Igor Tudor managed his final game at the club last weekend and Massimo Brambilla got Juve back to their winning ways for at least one night with Wednesday night’s victory over Udinese,
snapping their eight-game winless run that cost Tudor his job.
Now, on the first day of November, it’s time for another manager to take the helm. A more permanent one — for the 2025-26 season anyways.
Saturday night will be Spalletti Time. That is not something I expected to be writing back when this season started all of … checks notes … two months ago. But, here we are, and Luciano Spalletti has been appointed as Juventus’ new manager following Tudor’s sacking at the beginning of the week. Juve went from an inexperienced manager when it comes to top-level Serie A management to arguably the most experienced option they could have brought in on such short notice. And it is that experience that Juve management — namely Damien Comolli and Giorgio Chiellini, with the latter very much playing a role in Spalletti coming aboard — hopes will be able to stabilize things and bring some calm to the current storm that had seen Juve fail to win their last eight games before Wednesday night’s win over Udinese.
While Spalletti arrives at an extremely turbulent time at Juventus, he himself is in Turin to try and right the wrongs of his time with the Italian national team. It looked far from the same manager who guided Napoli to the Scudetto in the 2022-23 season and was so good while doing it. His time with Italy was marred by tactical issues and plenty of results that didn’t go his way — and that’s a big reason why Spalletti has returned to the club game basically six months after his last game with the Azzurri.
He is motivated to fully put that part of his coaching career in the past and redeem himself at Juventus.
Funny enough, Juventus also want Spalletti to come in and have these past couple of months also be fully in the past and have their new manager help them turn things around and, at the very least, get into the top four so that the summer of 2026 isn’t some sort of serious fire sale because of more financial deficiencies.
But when it comes to Spalletti’s debut, he will be without the two best players Juventus currently have, with Gleison Bremer and Kenan Yildiz both back in Turin due to injury. We knew Bremer would be out because he’s undergone knee surgery a few weeks ago, but it’s Yildiz not traveling with the rest of the team to Cremona that is the sudden development that Spalletti will now have to deal with. But the lingering knee issue that first popped up prior to what proved to be Tudor’s final game in charge at Juventus is now still a thing a week later and has forced the talented No. 10 to stay back home for at least one game.
(And with the Champions League matchup against Sporting looming large all of three days later, it’s not like there’s going to be a lot of time for him to potentially recover and become available again.)
Plus, there’s the little fact that Spalletti, who was announced as Juventus’ new manager on Thursday, has had all of one training session with his new team. Because of that, it’s hard to know what to really expect both in terms of his tactical setup as well as just what he might have been able to get across to his new squad.
Could that end up being a Massimo Brambilla situation like we saw on Wednesday night where there aren’t too many tweaks away from Tudor’s formation but more about the overall approach? Maybe. With so little time from when he was hired to when he will make his debut as Juve’s manager, Spalletti will just go on that same path in hopes of making it back-to-back wins. (Because, let’s face it, these early days are going to be just about the results to hopefully get some confidence going again.)
It’s going to take some time for Spalletti to truly put his stamp on this team. And that’s assuming that he will be able to do that — something that Tudor and his predecessor, Thiago Motta, weren’t able to do during their time as Juve manager over the last year and a half.
But, regardless of how long that may end up taking as this season goes on, Spalletti is here, he’s got his fresh suit already looking sharp and now he’s going to try and stop this Juventus spiral from getting any worse.
TEAM NEWS
- Have you heard? Juventus has a new manager. His name is Luciano Spalletti.
- Can he match the winning percentage by Massimo Brambilla that was set earlier this week? Only time will tell.
- The big news other than Spalletti being hired is that Juve’s new manager will be without the club’s star attacker, Yildiz, who will miss Saturday night’s game due to his lingering knee issue. At this point, it’s probably a safe bet to consider him a potential doubt for Tuesday’s Champions League fixture against Sporting, too.
- Also new to the injury list and not called up for Saturday’s trip to Cremona: Lloyd Kelly, who had previously played every single minute of Juventus’ first nine league games this season.
- Besides Yildiz and Kelly, Juve’s injury list includes: Bremer, Juan Cabal, Carlo Pinsoglio and (of course) Arek Milik.
- Khephren Thuram is back in the squad after not being called up for Wednesday’s win over Udinese.
- What’s the main objective for Spalletti this season? This is what he said at his introductory press conference on Friday: “qualifying for the Champions League, but I hope to be back in the Scudetto race too, and that’s what we said to the players yesterday in the dressing room.”
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
One of the most memorable squabbles and public decisions Spalletti had prior to his arrival with Juventus had to do with somebody who wears bianconero but wasn’t really in the picture with the Italian national team.
You probably remember the debate about whether a certain Juve midfielder wasn’t included in the Azzurri setup for the Euros in the summer of 2024 despite having a pretty dang solid season for Max Allegri.
Well, look who’s suddenly coaching that same midfielder now at the club level …
Not to say that there’s going to be lingering drama with Spalletti and Manuel Locatelli, but it is rather ironic that suddenly one of the more notable omissions that he didn’t pick to bring with him to the Euros is now the captain o the club he’s managing. There’s probably been some sort of discussion between the two already, and it’s pretty easy to say that getting some sort of midfield production is one of the biggest priorities that Spalletti has over the next couple of months.
And if Spalletti is going to keep things pretty simple over these first couple of weeks while he tries to implement his own ideas, having Locatelli on board and playing better than he has this season is probably a good place to start.
Not that Locatelli has been bad this season under Tudor. But it’s not like he’s been great, either. At 27 years old, this is basically who he is at this point of his career — and that is a midfielder who has some strong characteristics but is not going to be somebody who is the anchor for a much more successful kind of squad who clearly does have his shortcomings.
So we’ll see just how the Spalletti-Locatelli dynamic plays out over these first few weeks of the new manager’s time in Turin. At the very least, we figure Locatelli will play considering Teun Koopmeiners — who earned plenty of praise from Spalletti during his introductory press conference — is still struggling to find any sort of positive form and Thuram has battled physical issues over the last couple of weeks.
Juventus need Spalletti to see a lot of players improve on an individual basis if this team is going to actually turn things around. You can certainly include Locatelli on that list no matter what their past may be.
MATCH INFO
When: Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025.
Where: Stadio Giovanni Zini, Cremona, Italy.
Official kickoff time: 8:45 p.m. local time in Italy and across Europe, 7:45 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 3:45 p.m. Eastern time, 2:45 p.m. Central time, 12:45 p.m. Pacific time.
(Please note that the fall time change has gone into effect in Italy, thus having kickoff be an hour later than usual in certain areas of the world like the United States.)
HOW TO WATCH
Television: TLN (Canada); Sky Sport 251, Sky Sport Calcio, Sky Sport 4K (Italy).
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, CBS Sports Golazo Network, DAZN USA, Amazon Prime Video (United States); DAZN Canada; fuboTV Canada; Amazon Prime Video; Fubo Sports Network Canada (Canada); DAZN UK (United Kingdom); DAZN Italia, Sky Go 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. If you haven’t already, join the community on Black & White & Read All Over, and join in the discussion below.
