The 36-time Italian champions may not be at the peak of their powers, but have found a little more coherency since appointing Igor Tudor as head coach in March.
The former Juventus defender will be aiming to add to the Old Lady’s sprawling honours list, although the Turin side are not among the favourites…
Follow the Club World Cup on The Athletic this summer…
How good are they?
Not as good as they’d like to be after committing to spend a quarter of a billion (gross) on players last summer.
Juventus fired Thiago Motta seven months into his first season as head coach, then last week parted with managing director of football Cristiano Giuntoli after achieving the absolute minimum; a fourth-place finish and Champions League qualification.
It is now five years since Juventus last won Serie A and, unless something drastic happens, the drought could last long enough to match the nine-year barren run the club endured between the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Juve’s last major trophy was the Coppa Italia in 2024 (Isabella Bonotto/Getty Images)
How did they get here?
As the eighth-best eligible ranked team in the UEFA rankings. Former Super League partners Barcelona did Juventus a favour in spring 2024, knocking Napoli out of the Champions League in the round of 16 and therefore making it impossible for them to overtake Juventus in the rankings.
Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis was not happy and threatened to appeal because Juventus were serving a one-year ban from European competition at the time Barcelona knocked his own club out of the Champions League and the running for the Club World Cup.
What’s their style of play?
Soporific under Motta. Juventus drew 16 league games, the joint most in Europe’s top five leagues with Osasuna in La Liga. There was little of the positional fluidity and slick football that had previously characterised his Bologna side. Instead, Juventus passed, passed and passed their fans to sleep. An injury crisis did not help Motta, nor did playing square pegs in round holes.
His replacement Tudor has set the team up more coherently. Juventus have become more direct and aggressive in the Atalanta-esque system Tudor adopted to great success with Hellas Verona.
Tell us about the coach
Tudor was a member of those great Juventus teams from the turn of the century. The Croat was part of a defence featuring Gigi Buffon, Lilian Thuram and later Fabio Cannavaro. It was up to them to keep their end of the bargain and protect Juventus’ goal while Zinedine Zidane, Alessandro Del Piero and then Pavel Nedved went up the other end and scored.
A big personality, he played under Marcello Lippi and Carlo Ancelotti. This is his second spell at Juventus in a coaching role. He served as an assistant under Andrea Pirlo but struck out on his own at Verona, Marseille and Lazio where he proved more credible and successful.
Tudor was previously at Juve as a player and as assistant manager (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
Who is their star player?
Gleison Bremer should have a higher profile. The Brazilian looks like the best centre-back in Serie A on his day and Juventus’ season deteriorated after he ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament in October.
Juventus’ big names, Dusan Vlahovic, Nico Gonzalez and Teun Koopmeiners, are big in Italy, not elsewhere and did not perform to their ability this year, which is why Khephren Thuram is the player to follow. Son of Juventus legend and World Cup winner Lilian, his driving runs from midfield were increasingly hard for opponents to stop once he settled into his first Serie A campaign.
And their rising star?
Juventus’ Next Gen team, an under-23 side registered in Italy’s third division, has bridged the gap between youth team and first team football. While it’s a shame that sacked sporting director Giuntoli decided to cash in on the work of his forebears, profiting on Dean Huijsen, Matias Soule, Samuel Iling-Junior and Enzo Barrenechea, the star of the Next Gen scheme, Kenan Yildiz, is still at the club.
Juventus’ decision to give him the prestigious No 10 shirt shows how much they believe in the 20-year-old Turk, who was involved in 15 goals this season.
Kenan Yildiz has shone for Juventus in 2024-25 (Francesco Scaccianoce/Getty Images)
What is their best chant?
They have one about only ever thinking about the team, how watching Juventus makes them a child again (a ‘bambino’) and defending the colours is their destiny (their ‘destino’).
Who are their biggest rivals back home?
Inter. That’s why the Derby d’Italia in Serie A is between them and not Juventus and Milan. It is Italy’s most poisonous rivalry. Inter fans long believed Juventus won things at their expense, taking refuge for their own shortcomings in conspiracies.
When the Calciopoli scandal relegated Juventus in 2006, Inter not only felt vindicated, they benefited. One of the two titles revoked from Juventus was controversially assigned to Inter, who also signed Patrick Vieira and Zlatan Ibrahimovic from them. Nearly 20 years later, the hatred remains undiminished.
(Isabella Bonotto/Getty Images)
Tell us something weird about the club…
Juventus originally played in pink before, in 1903, the team’s first foreign player, a Brit by the name of Gordon Thomas Savage, brought some Notts County shirts back to Italy with him. Juventus changed colours and style, and have worn black and white stripes ever since, with some variations.
The jersey Juventus will don at the Club World Cup incorporates pink into the default colour scheme made possible by Savage.
Why should a neutral fan root for them?
Even though Juventus sold Huijsen, Soule et al a year ago, this team is in keeping with the true meaning of the club’s name. It is based around youth and shows Juventus are moving with the times. Much has been made recently of how young Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain are at the moment, and Juventus are no different. The average age of their team this season is 24 and 288 days.
Who are they playing?
(All kick-offs ET/BST)
- June 18 — Al Ain, 9pm/2am (June 19)
- June 22 — Wydad Casablanca, 12pm/5pm
- June 26 — Manchester City, 3pm/8pm
(Top photos: Image Photo Agency, Marco Bertorello/Getty; design: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic)
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