Champions League Preview: Juventus vs. Lille

Today at 01:50 AM

Juve was back to their winning ways in Serie A over the weekend, but what about getting back on track in the Champions League?

At this stage of the game the last time Juventus were competing in the Champions League, we would be thinking about return fixtures and how one bad result could drastically alter their chances of making the knockout rounds. That was the world where four-team groups were the norm — you compared the first matchup, tried to identify what needed to change the second time around and then hope like hell that it actually happened.

But in this new world of the Champions League and it's "league phase," approaching the midway point of the fixture list doesn't mean you prepare for the same few teams all over again. Instead, it's a new team every single time.

For Juventus, that means new heading to France to play an opponent who just so happens to have beaten not one but both of Madrid's big boys within the last month.

While they sit right next to each other in the new-look Champions League table, Juventus and Lille are coming off very different kinds of results in Europe. Juventus' lone loss of the 2024-25 season in all competitions came the last time they stepped on the field in Europe, with the performance against Stuttgart very much being the opposite kind of showing as we've seen for much of the Bianconeri's return to the Champions League up until that point. Meanwhile, just 24 hours later, Lille was out there beating Atletico Madrid — albeit it thanks in large part to a very controversial penalty call — and completing the double against the two Madrid giants.

It's quite the interesting twist on a season for a Lille side that are sitting fourth in the Ligue 1 table and eight points behind league-leading Paris Saint-Germain. But whatever buttons Bruno Genesio has pressed in Europe, they have been working ever since Lille lost their UCL opener against Sporting back in September. (A European opener in which Lille fell behind and then went down to 10 men within a couple of minutes late in the first half.)

Those results in Europe won't find a certain Juventus manager stunned at what took place.

"I am not surprised by the results they have achieved in the opening stages of the season," Thiago Motta said at Monday's pre-match press conference. "Lille find themselves in this situation thanks to the excellent work carried out by the club in recent months and years."

After Saturday night's win over Udinese, Motta was praising him team's response to the recent run of results that hadn't gone their way. That involved a Derby d'Italia draw in which many of us were impressed with Juve's fight and comeback, but also a draw against Parma where we weren't really impressed with much at all. The win over Udinese was more of what Motta wants from his team, but we're also about to find out if it was the performance this team needed to start to get back on track and string some wins together both domestically and in Europe or if it was just a momentary reprieve before they slip back into the struggles of September and October where they weren't losing but also dropped points aplenty.

So far, we've seen three different kinds of Juventus performances in the Champions League. We saw them pretty much handle PSV Eindhoven with room to spare. Then saw them have to fight back amidst plenty of adversity against RB Leipzig when they were down a man. And, most recently, struggle to get out of park when facing Stuttgart in Turin. It's an interesting sample, for sure, but it also shows that this Juventus squad is still very much in its infancy stages despite the fact that they are now about to play their fourth of eight "league phase" fixtures and nearly a third of the way through the Serie A schedule.

Tuesday night will provide us with yet another chance to see where this team stands in their development and after such a busy three-week stretch that is nearly over with. Lille have shown they can pull a big European upset already this season, so it's up to Juventus to ensure that they're not added to the list.

TEAM NEWS

• Danilo is suspended after being sent off in the final minutes of Juventus' loss to Stuttgart two weeks ago. (Based on his form this season, him missing out might not be the worst thing in the world.)
• The Juventus injury list is one name shorter than it has been the last couple of weeks after Thiago Motta announced that midfielder Douglas Luiz will be back in the squad to face Lille on Tuesday night.
• That means the three names absent from the trip to France are Gleison Bremer, Arek Milik, and Nico Gonzalez. There are rumblings that Gonzalez is hoping to be back for the Turin derby this weekend, but Motta has yet to say if that really is a possibility.
• Motta is not expected to change his starting lineup, sticking with the same squad that beat Udinese 2-0 over the weekend. The only change that seems like is Francisco Conceição coming back into the starting lineup after starting on the bench Saturday night.
• Dusan Vlahovic has started all 14 of Juventus' games this season and played over 90% of all the minutes possible. When asked about Vlahovic, Motta said Juve's No. 9 "is doing very well and now it's time for him to build on the good things he's shown in recent matches."
• This is the third straighr game in which 18-year-old center back Javier Gil Puche has been included in Motta's matchday squad. However, he has yet to make his senior team debut.

JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH

For much of the last couple of weeks, Juventus' defense has looked a lot like you might expect a unit might when they don't have their clear-cut best player available.

Therefore, we will talk about one of those defenders who is expected to lead the Bremer-less defense now. And somebody who, if not for that very strong Brazilian man, would be the one who would earn the honor of Juve's best defender of the young season thus far.

There is no denying that Juventus need Pierre Kalulu to be very good Tuesday night if they want to have a chance to beat Lille. The same goes for his partner in the center of defense, Federico Gatti, but it's even more the case of Kalulu because he is the best pure defender that Juventus currently has available to them.

Here's the thing, though: Juventus' defense was almost certainly going to take a step back from its red-hot form to start the season with Bremer being out injured with his torn ACL. But lest we forget that the Kalulu-Bremer partnership also clicked basically from the beginning as well, with the two teaming up to help Juventus play so well defensively for much of the first two months of the new season.

But now with Bremer out, Kalulu has become that much more important. And while I'm not trying to say that Kalulu and Gatti are a bad partnership in the center of defense — they certainly seem to compliment each other much better than when Danilo has been in there for Mr. Cats — they most definitely aren't firing on all cylinders like we saw from Kalulu and Bremer.

So when Kalulu steps foot back on his home soil in France, his importance to Juve's defense is much greater than it was when he first arrived and absolutely hit the ground running.

We've seen what Kalulu can do when everything is going right. We've seen what he can do when playing alongside a central defender who compliments him so well. But now we need to see what he can do when he is potentially viewed as the best defender that is available to Thiago Motta. And while he's been very, very good since arriving on loan from AC Milan, seeing him be The Guy for this Juve defense is probably still something that hasn't totally happened just yet.

MATCH INFO

When: Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.

Where: Stade Pierre-Mauroy, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France.

Official kickoff time: 9 p.m. in Italy and the Central European time zone, 8 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 3 p.m. Eastern time, 12 p.m. Pacific time.

HOW TO WATCH

Television: CBS Sports Network (United States); TNT Sports 5 (United Kingdom); Sky Sport 253 (Italy).

Online/Streaming:Paramount+ (United States); fuboTV Canada (Canada); OneFootball.com (United Kingdom); 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 Twitter. If you haven't already, join the community on Black & White & Read All Over, and join in the discussion below.