Juventus host struggling Roma on Sunday with their tails up and ready to show the rest of Serie A that under Thiago Motta Italy’s Old Lady is fit for a league title tilt.
Two consecutive 3-0 wins against modest opposition have shown a clean break with the stodgy football of old and have given Motta the look of someone made for big club coaching.
But for all Juve’s fancy new football, Como and Verona are not any sort of barometer for a team’s Scudetto credentials like Roma — a club supposed to be challenging for Champions League football — even if Motta has refused to entertain any early title talk.
“We’ve only played two matches, even if we’ve done very well because we’ve won both and played very well,” Motta told public broadcaster RAI.
Motta’s start on the Juve bench has been all the more impressive as his team is still being built and he has made good use of youngsters from the “Next Gen” team which plays in the third-division Serie C.
Samuel Mbangula, 20, scored Juve’s first goal of the season against Como and followed that up by setting up fellow Next Gen graduate Nicolo Savona against Verona.
Since then the signing of star Dutch midfielder Teun Koopmeiners from Atalanta for more than 60 million euros has been completed, another powerplay in a busy summer transfer window for Juve who last won Serie A four years ago.
Roma should in fact be a much less tricky proposition than previously thought as Daniele De Rossi deals with a horrible opening couple of weeks to his first full season in charge of his boyhood club.
Loudly booed off by over 67,000 supporters after a first ever home defeat to Empoli last weekend, a trip to Juve is the last ting De Rossi needed as he deals with the trickiest situation he’s had since replacing Jose Mourinho in January.
Less than a year separates De Rossi and Motta in age but the former is a managerial novice compared to the latter, who at 42 is already in his fourth job having also coached Genoa, Spezia and Bologna.
De Rossi’s only previous managerial job was an ill-fated four months at lower-league outfit SPAL which came to an abrupt end in February last year.
Current champions and Juve’s arch-rivals Inter Milan host Atalanta on Friday in a weekend of interesting fixtures which also includes AC Milan travelling to Lazio on Saturday with new coach Paulo Fonseca already under pressure.
Milan were dismal in losing to promoted Parma last time out and look nowhere near closing the gap that separates them from Inter, and Lazio will want to bounce back at home after being beaten at Udinese.
Player to watch: Romelu Lukaku
Finally free of his Chelsea nightmare and back with his favourite manager, Lukaku may not start Napoli’s home clash with Parma but could play a small part after moving to his third Serie A club.
A reported 30-million-euro deal is yet to be officially announced but on Wednesday Lukaku landed back in Rome and was greeted by delighted Napoli fans before he completed his medical in the Italian capital, where he spent last season with Roma.
A lot has changed since Lukaku fired Inter, then coached by new Napoli boss Antonio Conte, to the Scudetto in 2021 but with a club and a manager who truly want him the Belgian has a chance to prove he is still a top-level striker and fit to replace want-away star Victor Osimhen.
Fixtures (times GMT)
Friday
Venezia v Torino (1630), Inter v Atalanta (1845)
Saturday
Bologna v Empoli, Lecce v Cagliari (1630), Napoli v Parma, Lazio v AC Milan (1845)
Sunday
Genoa v Verona, Fiorentina v Monza (1630), Juventus v Roma, Udinese v Como (1845)
