These days, Juventus going to Naples to face Napoli is always going to be a very, very important domestic fixture. Napoli are, as much as you might hate it, one of the standards in Serie A these days, and that is a place in which Juventus are trying to return to rather than being whatever the heck you wanna describe them as the past few years. Napoli are, begrudgingly, the club that has won two of the last three Serie A titles, and they’ve done their most recent triumph with the same guy who kicked off Juve’s decade full of dominance during the 2010s.
What about the other guy who ended Napoli’s three-decade-long title draught?
Well, funny you mention that. Because he’s going to be lining up in the visitors’ dugout at the Maradona this weekend.
A game that always has plenty of narrative these days has added an even greater, incredibly shiny bald-headed layer to it. That is because Sunday night’s showdown between defending champions Napoli and visiting Juventus at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona will be a managerial matchup between the two guys last to win a title in Naples. You will have Antonio Conte on one side, and then you’ll have Luciano Spalletti in his first trip back to the Maradona on the other. One guy was Juve’s captain and one so much as coach in Turin, while the other won Napoli’s first Scudetto since 1990 and got a big fat tattoo to show for it. It’s narrative galore, and the kind of matchup between two very good managers that will have the Italian press licking their chops at all of the possibilities of what to talk about.
But don’t forget this: it’s also second place hosting seventh place, with the latter truly trying to make a statement when it comes to their ability to turn things around under their new manager.
Oh, and let’s not forget this fact, too: Juventus reportedly tried to bring Conte back to Turin this past summer, instead seeing their former manager stay at Napoli and Igor Tudor subsequently be confirmed. (We all know how that turned out and thus the reason Spalletti is here.)
See? That’s narrative aplenty, folks.
After three straight draws on either side of the international break, Juventus head to Naples with their best (yet still brief) run of form under Spalletti, with three straight wins that just so happen to come in three different competitions. Juve’s got their first win in the Champions League, they actually beat a bottom-half team in Cagliari and then won their Coppa Italia opener on Tuesday night. That’s something, and the first time they’ve won three fixtures in a row since September.
Of course, Juve also head to Naples far from full strength. They’re going to be without the best defender. They’re going to be without the most in-form option at the No. 9 position. They’re down to the bare bones of their depth in defense. This is far from how Spalletti wants to face the defending champions on their home turf.
The counterpoint is that Napoli are far from healthy as well. Conte’s side will take the field against Juventus without a good number of their biggest names, with midfielder Stanislav Lobotka being the latest injury doubt for Napoli. They have won four games on the bounce in all competitions, but it’s not like Napoli are completely untouchable this season by any means. Conte has, to his credit, seemingly gone back to a setup that made Napoli so successful last season to try and cope with a lot of the injuries, and the fact that they’re still right in the mix in a very crowded top four that is only separated by one measly point is a testament to the job he can do.
No matter if it’s been with Spalletti or now Conte, Napoli have dominated the head-to-head matchup in recent years, winning four of their last six games against Juventus in Serie A.
But with Inter Milan absolutely hammering Como on Saturday and Bologna facing Lazio earlier in the day on Sunday, Juventus do have a chance to take advantage of some results in front of them and move up in the league table. That’s something that we’ve Juve not always do both this season and the last couple of years. With things so tightly packed at the top of the able, there’s the chance for a lot of movement with each passing week. And that’s something that Juve desperately need to get involved in as soon as they possibly can.
Maybe Juventus’ penchant for raising their game against some of the best in Serie A despite their relative struggles on the whole the last few years will show its face again on Sunday night against Napoli. Or maybe it will go like so many of the other games against Napoli over the last couple of years.
Either way, this is about to be a spectacle simply because of who’s going to be heading back to the Maradona for the first time since the spring of 2023 when he had the city of Naples celebrating for weeks on end.
- Just in case you’re wondering how things are going on the injury front, there was not one but two Juventus players undergoing surgery to repair injuries they’ve suffered within the past week. So, yeah … they’re great.
- Dusan Vlahovic underwent surgery for his “high grade” adductor injury and will be out for approximately four months.
- As weird as it sounds, Federico Gatti also having to undergo surgery for a meniscus injury might be the bigger deal in the immediate future simply because Juventus only has two healthy center backs available for the trip to Naples. Gatti is expected to be out at least a month.
- Those two healthy center backs, by the way, are Pierre Kalulu and Lloyd Kelly. With Spalletti expected to stick with a back three and Teun Koopmeiners playing as a left-sided center back the past month, it’s pretty easy to figure out what Juventus’ defense will look like against Napoli.
- The other injured players are no surprise: Gleison Bremer, Daniele Rugani, Carlo Pinsoglio and (of course) Arek Milik.
- Juventus backup goalkeeper Mattia Perin is back in the squad after Spalletti said he was dealing with some fatigue following starts against Bodø/Glimt and Cagliari. Michele Di Gregorio started in Perin’s place during his customary Coppa Italia duty midweek.
- As has been the case for the past few weeks, Koopmeiners is still one yellow card away from having to serve a one-game suspension. This matters with Bologna and Roma next up on the schedule in Serie A as well as the defensive depth crunch Spalletti is currently dealing with.
- Spalletti has decided that Juve will not travel to southern Italy the day before the clash with Napoli as has been the case for years now. Instead, they will leave Sunday morning to try and avoid the notorious antics from Napoli supporters at the team hotel the night before.
We won’t be seeing Dusan Vlahovic in a Juventus jersey until winter turns to spring. That means the next four months will be quite the interesting time for Luciano Spalletti and Juve to figure out how they want to take this attack forward this season (and likely beyond that).
What better way to go into December than with somebody who has “Iceman” as his nickname?
ALLIANZ STADIUM, TORINO, ITALY – 2025/11/29: Jonathan David of Juventus Fc gestures during the Serie A football match between Juventus Fc and Cagliari Calcio. Juventus Fc wins 2-1 over Cagliari Calcio. (Photo by Marco Canoniero/LightRocket via Getty Images) LightRocket via Getty Images
If we are to believe the reports coming out of Italy to end the work week, it will probably be Jonathan David starting in Vlahovic’s spot when Juventus take on Napoli. Considering David has had a productive last couple of weeks, that feels like the right kind of move for Spalletti — especially when you consider just how much the club has thought Canada’s all-time leading scorer would be at the heart of the forward line from the get-go this season.
Is this the way we would have liked to see David get his first real shot at consistent playing time at Juve?
No, of course not. But when you consider the fact that we were sitting here just a few months ago thinking that it would be David starting more often than not and Vlahovic wouldn’t even be at the club … well, this is basically that in a weird way for these next three or four months at least.
Where Loïs Openda fits into all this still remains to be seen. Spalletti has already said that they are different kinds of strikers, so it’s something that might allow them to play alongside each other more often as the season goes on. But, for now (and as long as Kenan Yildiz is still cooking), you feel like there’s going to be a one or the other kind of decision for Spalletti.
David, thankfully, is starting to show signs off life after his difficult start to life in Turin. His performance against Udinese was one of his best since donning bianconero for the first time. Say what you want about the lineup that Udinese had out there — and it certainly wasn’t 100% first choice — but David needs to keep putting those types of performances together. Goals, goal contributions, whatever — he needs to continue to build.
Facing Napoli will be one of his biggest tests to date since he signed with Juventus. But if Juve believe he can be a striker to build the squad around, there’s no better time than now to show just that.
When: Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025.
Where: Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, Naples, Italy.
Official kickoff time: 8:45 p.m. local time in Italy and across Europe, 7:45 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, 1:45 p.m. Central time, 11:45 a.m. Pacific time.
Television: Fox Deportes (United States); TLN (Canada); TNT Sports 1, TNT Sports 4 (United Kingdom).
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