Round 19: Atalanta vs. Juventus match preview

Today at 01:40 AM

No rest for the weary as Juve head to Bergamo for Matchday 19 that's happening after Matchday 20.

Through the first two games of 2025, things certainly are looking a lot like 2025 for Thiago Motta and Juventus — and that is not a development in a good kind of way.

Even without taking what happened in the Supercoppa into account, Juve's first Serie A fixture of the new year, the second Derby della Mole of the 2024-25 season, had a whole lot of the same trends that we've seen over the past couple of months as the draws started to become more and more common. Not only was Saturday's result with Torino the 12th draw Juventus recorded in their opening 19 league fixtures, but also pushed the amount of points Motta's squad have dropped from a winning position up to 12.

Put those 12 points with the 33 that Juve currently have to their name and they'd be sitting ... almost at the top of the table. (Sorry for adding a little more salt in the wound. In a way, I'm doing it to myself, so there's also that.)

So now, with just a couple of days of rest, Juventus are now set to face the one team that they have yet to play domestically so far this season. It's a trip to Bergamo and the Gewiss Stadium for Motta's squad, as Juventus will face an Atalanta side that themselves have a small case of the draws of late that have seen them fall off the pace with league leaders Napoli and Inter Milan. But this rescheduled Matchday 19 fixture that is technically the 20th game in which Juventus will play in Serie A is going to be used as a measuring stick of sorts to see just how up to snuff the Bianconeri are with a club that is also competing for a spot in the top four.

No matter who is or isn't back from injury compared to Saturday's draw with Torino, it's a measuring stick considering just how well Atalanta have played for much of the season.

It doesn't really matter who Juve are playing these days, those same problems that have resulted in dropped points continue to creep back into our lives. The inability to hold a lead. The inability to create quality scoring chances on a consistent basis. Or, if those chances do get created, the inability to put them away like we saw against Torino.

Or, we can just have somebody who will be playing his first game back in Bergamo since his summer move to Juventus what's been going wrong.

"We lack a bit of everything," Juve midfielder Teun Koopmeiners said after the Torino draw.

And you know what? He's not wrong. Koopmeiners went on to say in the same post-game interview that "It's not okay to be where we are now" in relation to where Juventus currently sit in the Serie A table on top of all the draws and dropped points that they've had. He continued: "There are moments when we play well and have chances, but we don't do it for 90 minutes. We must improve and score more goals. We concede too easily. We had a numerical advantage inside the box, and they still scored; it's not possible. I must take responsibility, and there are no excuses."

Facing Atalanta is the second game in a massive five-game stretch both in Serie A and the Champions League for Juventus. Domestically, they can either keep the status quo of draws and dropped points or maybe (please?) actually improving their standing on closing the gap between themselves and the top four. In Europe, Juventus can solidify their knockout round playoff position in the league phase table or maybe even crack into the top eight if results go their way.

For now, though, the concentration is clearly on trying to, somehow, turn the tide for the better domestically after so many dropped points in recent weeks.

Juventus are one of only two teams in Europe's top five leagues to have a double-digit total of draws so far this season. (Brighton, who have 10 draws in 20 games, are the other.) With Saturday's draw, they finished the first half of a season with their worst points total in 14 years.

Atalanta, like Juventus, were in Saudi Arabia for the new-look four-team Supercoppa and headed home after one game thanks to their loss to Inter. Their last two league fixtures, also like Juventus, have ended in draws, first to Lazio to close out 2024 and then a scoreless afternoon against Udinese this past Saturday. Does this mean they're starting to cool off after their impressive 11-game winning streak in Serie A? Or is this just a little blip on the radar that could very well right itself against Juventus on Tuesday night?

At this point, Juventus doing anything than recording a draw almost seems like a foreign concept. That's just what happens when nearly two-thirds of your results in the first half of a new domestic season are draws.

TEAM NEWS

• Thanks to the red card he was shown in the Derby della Mole over the weekend, Thiago Motta will be suspended for the trip to Bergamo. That means, just like it was a little over a month ago, it will be Alexandre Hugeux time on the Juve sideline.
• Dusan Vlahovic and Francisco Conceição have not recovered in time to face Atalanta and will miss their second and third straight games, respectively, due to injury.
• The other injuries are the long-term absences: Gleison Bremer, Juan Cabal and Arek Milik.
• After serving his yellow card accumulation suspension over the weekend, Manuel Locatelli is back in the squad and available for selection against Atalanta.
• As Motta said in his post-game press conference after the Torino draw, Andrea Cambiaso is still very much dealing with inflammation in his sprained ankle and is getting pain-killer injections to be able to play, albeit in a limited capacity. (Some in the Italian media are predicting Cambiaso will return to the starting lineup Tuesday night despite what Motta has said about the Italian fullback's status.)
• Juventus, for the second straight game, will have just five outfield players available off the bench. We know that because the traveling squad was announced prior to the departure for Bergamo and there weren't any Next Gen players added to the roster to face Atalanta.
• As hard as it may be to imagine these days, a win will see Juventus move level on points with Lazio and up into fourth place thanks to the Bianconeri's head-to-head victory earlier this season and much better goal differential.

JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH

Considering that Atalanta are the one team that Juventus have yet to play domestically, there is still one more chance for one of the many summer signings to get the "first game against his former team" out of the way.

And it just so happens it's a player who has, to date, not been able to replicate the same kind of success at his new club that he had at his previous club.

That kind of reaction that Koopmeiners has in the photo above is probably a good way to represent how a lot of folks are feeling about his season to date (as well as how Juventus have played the last few months). It's frustration, plain and simple — and it's not going away.

Combine the player and the squad struggling with the high price that Juventus paid to being Koopmeiners to Turin and you've got a situation in which a very talented player is even more under the microscope than he has been since his first signed.

The first five months of Koopmeiners' Juventus career have not been all that great. As we've said before, his overall form have been a lot like the team as a whole — some good moments but certainly lacking the overall punch that so many of us were hoping to see by now. The same player that was one of the best players in Serie A last season has yet to consistently show his face in bianconero, and we're still waiting for him to reappear no matter if it's in the No 10 role playing deeper in midfield.

Maybe a trip back to where he played his best football will kick something into gear. Or maybe he'll get a not-so-nice reception along the lines of when some of Juve's former Fiorentina players have stepped foot back in Florence. (And hopefully is whistles and just whistles. Nothing more than that.) It's not like things exactly ended amicably between Koopmeiners and Atalanta as he held out for his move to Juventus late in the summer transfer window.

But this very simple fact remains true: If Juventus are to kick into gear during this big stretch of games in January, it will most certainly have to coincide with Koopmeiners doing the same.

MATCH INFO

When: Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025.

Where: Gewiss Stadium, Bergamo, Italy.

Official kickoff time: 8:45 p.m. in Italy and the Central European time zone, 7:45 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, 11:45 a.m. Pacific time.

HOW TO WATCH

Television: TLN (Canada).

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