With just three games to go in the 2025-26 season, Juventus have the chance to see the home stretch go one of two ways. They can either hold firm on their slim, one-point margin over fifth-place Roma (and Como in sixth place) and qualify for the Champions League. Or, they can fumble away what was a good advantage to have just a couple of weeks ago, seeing chances to wrap things up go by the wayside and drop down into a potential doomsday scenario when it comes to the core of the roster and the finances
of the club.
One part of this fork in the road is the good option.
The other is … well, basically the opposite of that.
So how do you prevent a reality where Juventus walk through the less-than-desirable Door No. 2? You listen to Rocky Balboa’s wife Adrian and close your final three games with nothing but three points.
One week after lining up against a team that had just been officially relegated to Serie B, Juventus now face a team that is trying not to join Hellas Verona in Italy’s second division next season. As things stand right now, Lecce’s standing in 17th place is actually looking a little better than Juve’s in fourth. Lecce are four points ahead of Cremonese when it comes to the final relegation spot, with Hellas Verona and Pisa mathematically relegated during the opening hours of Matchday 35 last week. Come Saturday night at the Via Del Mare, any sort of taking points off Juventus will mean Lecce’s status in Serie A for next season is just that much looks that much better. But at the same time, it would mean the potential and dread Door No. 2 option for Luciano Spalletti of becoming that much more of a reality.
Considering Juventus’ final two fixtures of the season are against two teams, Fiorentina and Torino (at the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino), who would absolutely love to see the Bianconeri’s Champions League hopes go up in smoke right in front of the finish line, going into those two matchups in even worse shape than things may appear now is potentially the final nail in the coffin. Or least that’s how it would feel from the outside.
As weird as the past few days have been because when you drop points against a team that’s already been relegated and see your advantage in fourth place cut to a single point it’s not like you can feel great about things, Juventus are still in the driver’s seat. They can control their own destiny. You win the final three games of the season and you’re in the Champions League again. It won’t matter what Roma does. It won’t matter what Como does, either. Three wins and you’re in — simple as that.
Manuel Locatelli put it best earlier this week: “We know it all depends on us.”
That’s seven simple words from the man who wears the captain’s armband at Juventus. The words are simple, but as the Bianconeri showed last weekend, actually doing so against one of the worst teams in the league — that’s already been relegated down to Serie B, too! — isn’t as simple as it appears on paper. (It should have been but it wasn’t. Because this team just shoots itself in the foot so many damn times.)
Spalletti was just as direct — or at least in his own special way since he’s a very philosophical when at the microphone — when discussing Juve’s current situation in regard to Champions League qualification.
“In some ways, though, the path is now clearer, there’s only one way forward, with no room for distraction,” he said during Friday’s pre-match press conference. “You don’t risk getting there whilst harbouring doubts about how you should behave. You have to be resolute in your choices and intentions. That’s what makes the difference, we need to do something that breaks the monotony, the routine.”
So now after facing a team that had nothing left to play for other than pride (and maybe auditioning for their next team), you are facing a second straight provincial side that has a whole lot on the line when they take the field on Saturday night.
Something that is true: Lecce has more wins over the last couple of matchdays Juventus. Seriously, that’s a thing. Have they been great over their last six games, let alone the last few months? Of course not, and that is a big reason why they’re just a few points out of the relegation zone as compared to a much more comfortable position with three games to go. They are still fighting for their lives in Serie A, and a loss to Juventus plus Cremonese beating Pisa on Sunday could make for an incredibly stressful final two weeks of the season for Eusebio Di Francesco.
So, this is no pushover. Juve may have won the last four of six meetings against Lecce since their return to Serie A, but very few of them have been dominant or runaway kinds of victories. This could very well be another one of those cases where it’s 1-0 or 2-1 and you’re going to have to grind out every single minute in which you have the lead despite the fact you’re playing against one of the statistically worst teams in Serie A.
Then again, Juve’s already dropped points against Lecce once this season — and what a wonderful way to begin the calendar year of 2026 that was! — so it might not be out of the realm of possibilities that you’re seriously worrying about that happening again. You certainly won’t be alone there, my friend.
But like Spalletti and Locatelli have both said, Juventus have their fate in their hands. They get all three points and they’re heading back to Turin just that much closer to qualifying for the Champions League. It might not be a situation that’s wrapped up a couple of weeks early like we hoped, but the more you can prevent the disaster situation from happening then the better your chances of getting into the competition with the world-famous anthem end up being.
Nobody wants to see Door No. 2 become a reality. Not Spalletti, not Locatelli, not any of us.
TEAM NEWS
- The good news? For the past three days, pretty much everybody who is currently available to Spalletti has trained with the group. No more wondering about if Kenan Yildiz has trained separately or with his teammates. None of that with Khephren Thuram or Dusan Vlahovic.
- The only two players out injured against Lecce are Juan Cabal and Arek Milik, with both players having suffered season-ending injuries last month.
- There are now three Juventus players who are one yellow card away from suspension: Gleison Bremer, Lloyd Kelly and Manuel Locatelli. With three games to go and Juventus’ slim advantage in fourth place, this feels like an important thing to keep in mind.
- The biggest piece of squad news to come out of Spalletti’s pre-match press conference: Vlahovic could very well be in the starting lineup. “Let’s not place too much responsibility on him either, team cohesion comes from many things,” Spalletti said of Vlahovic, who hasn’t started a game since Juve’s late-November win over Cagliari in which he had to come off after 30 minutes due to injury.
- Despite his role in Hellas Verona’s goal last weekend, Michele Di Gregorio is expected to keep his place in the starting lineup ahead of Mattia Perin.
- Even though we haven’t seen much of him over the last couple of months, Spalletti said that Loïs Openda falling out of the rotation is one of his “unmentioned mistakes” as Juventus manager. “If I didn’t play him, it’s because I thought the others were better and could give us more results in these games,” Spalletti added.
- Only six of Juventus’ 17 away games this season have seen three goals or more be scored. Take that as you will ahead of a trip to a stadium in which Juve dropped points last season.
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
So Spalletti said Vlahovic could very well be in the starting lineup against Lecce?
And you think we won’t take that chance to talk again about a Juventus attacking player for very obvious reasons?
Of course we will. Every single time Lucio opens that door, we will take that chance.
Yes, Vlahovic could be in the starting lineup and having Yildiz and Chico Conceição flanking him in attack against Lecce on Saturday night. In a way, maybe this is what Spalletti hoped for all along and wanted ever since the early weeks of his managerial tenure at Juventus up until Vlahovic got hurt and subsequently missed close to four months as a result.
But for Spalletti to say something like this during which a time that he doesn’t always have press conferences and doesn’t usually comment on the starting lineup chances of players, it has to mean something. Or maybe that’s just me reading too much into it. Or maybe it’s just me hoping that the easy pick to fill out this section of the preview actually comes to fruition.
Understandably, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag for Vlahovic in his first couple of appearances off the bench since coming back from his minor muscle injury he picked up while warming up to potentially come on against Genoa. There’s been some good things, but there’s also been some classic not-so-good things from Vlahovic that has you just shaking your head because you’ve seen them so many times over the last few years.
The thing is, though, the alternatives aren’t exactly inspiring. Is Vlahovic a better option than Jonathan David right now? Maybe. That’s basically what it’s down to for Spalletti and what he’s probably asking himself. Does this Juventus team have a better chance of scoring goals and winning on Saturday night (and then the next two weeks) if it’s Vlahovic or David starting up front? It doesn’t seem so simple, but maybe that’s just me.
At the very least, if Vlahovic does play from the start, it will be nice for Juventus to have somebody who is considered a fairly good free kicker taker. Because as he proved last weekend, he can do that well and it does actually bring something to the table as compared to the normal state of Juve’s threat from free kicks.
MATCH INFO
When: Saturday, May 9, 2026.
Where: Stadio Via Del Mare, Lecce, 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: TLN (Canada); TNT Sports 2 (United Kingdom); Sky Sport Calcio, Sky Sport 251 (Italy).
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, Amazon Prime USA, DAZN USA (United States); DAZN Canada; fuboTV Canada (Canada); DAZN UK (United Kingdom); DAZN Italy, Sky Go Italia, NOW TV (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.
