Round 29: Juventus vs. Fiorentina match preview
03/15/2025 07:20 PM
Can Juve get back on the horse against a Fiorentina team that always treats their visit to Florence as one of the biggest fixtures of the season?
There are 10 games to go in the 2024-25 season. Ten more chances for Juventus to, somehow, try and salvage something out a season that has certainly had its moments of major disappointments — especially over the last month.
That's not to say the confidence of seeing them doing that is all that high at the moment when you consider the last time Juve played they were absolutely played off the field by Atalanta in a matchup of third and fourth place.
So now Juve head to a stadium in which there will be no love lost, no warm welcome by any stretch of the imagination and certainly no easy task ahead of them in Florence.
What Juventus' answer to their blowout loss to Atalanta remains to be seen as they get set to face Fiorentina on Sunday evening at the Franchi. But what we do know is that they can't count on Lazio giving them any sort of reprieve and dropping points for a fourth time in the last month even if they are facing one of the most in-form teams going in Serie A these days. That means Juve's trip to Florence has suddenly become a whole lot more important than most of us probably viewed it before things kicked off last weekend against Atalanta.
I mean, it was important before considering Fiorentina have proven to be a tough out for many top teams this season even as they've cooled off following their hot start. But it's also because, as I've probably said too many times over the last couple of months, there is the risk of this thing getting even worse with more dropped points.
But what the state of the squad following the blowout loss to Atalanta — a reminder that it was Juventus' worse home defeat since 19-freaking-67 — is pretty much anybody's guess.
They could respond in the same kind of way they did when they lost to Napoli in Naples last month and begin another winning streak, one that allowed them to move into fourth place in the table and even have small hopes of a surprise late-season Scudetto push. Or they could basically do what they've done over the course of much of this season and just take another step back when things were starting to look like they might be turning for the better.
The thing is, though, Juve are going to be playing a team that has had plenty of their own difficulties in recent weeks.
Remember the first couple of months of the 2024-25 campaign when Fiorentina were in the top four and had a stretch in the fall of nine wins in 10 games? Well, that feels like a long, long time ago for Fiorentina supporters. As much as the wild win over Panathinaikos in the UEFA Conference League Round of 16 was a thrilling one, it's also one that came at a time in which La Viola's league struggles have been impossible to ignore and have put Raffaele Palladino's future into question just like Thiago Motta's has at Juventus.
In the 10 league fixtures since Juve and Fiorentina played to a 2-2 draw in Turin a couple of days after Christmas, Palladino's squad have just four wins. In their last five Serie A games, Fiorentina have won just once — and that came two weeks ago against a Lecce side that is currently sitting in 16th place.
So while Juventus will be the much more rested side with Fiorentina doing the Thursday-Sunday grind that nobody really enjoys, it's hard to say which team is actually entering this one in better shape both physically and mentally.
And that's part of the problem with how the last couple of months have gone for Juventus. There's been too many occasions for them to have a bounceback game — which speaks volumes to just how many disappointing moments there have been lately. So now Juve head to the Franchi and face a team they've had a good amount of success against in recent years, but the current form of Motta's squad suggest it may well be a total guessing game once again on Sunday.
TEAM NEWS
- Thiago Motta has recovered three players ahead of the trip to Florence, with Francisco Conceição, Nicolo Savona and Jonas Rouhi all returning to training earlier this week.
- That means Juventus' four injured players are basically down to the three long-term injuries — Gleison Bremer, Juan Cabal and Arek Milik — and Douglas Luiz, who himself is closing in on 20 games missed due to his numerous injuries this season.
- Even though it's now been a couple of weeks since he returned, there still seems to be a chance that Pierre Kalulu — arguably Juve's best defender since Bremer's injury in October — will start on the bench in favor of more Lloyd Kelly minutes.
- All signs point toward Kenan Yildiz having recovered from the stomach illness that forced him to be subbed off at the half during last weekend's loss to Atalanta.
- As has been the case the last couple of weeks, Andrea Cambiaso is the only Juventus player who is one yellow card away from suspension. (As is Nicolo Fagioli, but he is currently not a Juventus player and probably won't be one again based on how he's played with Fiorentina.)
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
Considering the fact that the former Viola player on the Juventus roster that Fiorentina fans love to hate seems very unlikely to start against his old club, the man who will be leading the Bianconeri line seems fairly easy to figure out.
If only he entered this game with a little bit better numbers over the last month, right?
Since his red-hot start to life at Juventus in which Randal Kolo Muani scored five goals in his first three games wearing bianconero, the 26-year-old Frenchman has cooled off.
Significantly.
Sure, sure, sure ... I know it's not all his fault. There's only so much a guy can do when the rest of your team not named Michele Di Gregorio struggles in the way they did against Atalanta last weekend. But the fact still remains that since the big three-game stretch to begin life in Turin, this is how things have looked like for Kolo Muani:
- Seven games in all competitions
- Six starts
- Two assists
- Zero goals
- A grand total of 11 shots taken
Well crap That's not great. Averaging less than a shot and a half a game is not great at all. (It's also a way to prevent a buzz, but that's another matter entirely.) While those two assists have been nice, it's not exactly like the second one helped Juventus win like the first one did.
No matter how you feel about how well Kolo Muani is or isn't playing now that we're entering the second full month of his time at Juventus, it's pretty easy to say that he remains one of the biggest goal threats for this squad knowing how Dusan Vlahovic has now been relegated to a bench role. But the problem is that there's been so many other issues with this team since Kolo Muani's arrival that now as opponents adjust to him being in the lineup it's becoming increasingly more difficult for him to replicate anything close to what he did back in early February.
For all of the issues that Fiorentina have had this season, they've got the sixth-best defensive record in Serie A. Knowing that Palladino also helped Monza have a strong defensive record for a club that punching well above their weight last season, that maybe shouldn't come as a surprise. But even with ever-changing starting lineups and being forced change tactical setups due to countless numbers of injuries, they've played well at the back most of the time.
So, if Kolo Muani is to get back to his goal scoring ways, he'll certainly be doing against a team that will be no slouch at the back by any means.
MATCH INFO
When: Sunday, March 16, 2025.
Where: Stadio Artemio Franchi, Florence, Italy.
Official kickoff time: 6 p.m. in Italy and the Central European time zone, 5 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 1 p.m. Eastern time, 10 a.m. Pacific time.
(Please note that Daylight Saving Time in the United States begun last weekend on March 9 and will not go into effect in Europe until the last Sunday in the month.)
HOW TO WATCH
Television: TLN (Canada); Sky Sport 251, Sky Sport Calcio, Sky Sport 4K (Italy).
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.
