Coppa Italia Preview: Juventus vs. Udinese

Just as was the case a year ago, the Coppa Italia is popping up on Juventus’ schedule a little earlier than we had become accustomed to in previous seasons. We can almost certainly thank the extended Champions League league phase fixture list for that, with the early days of January providing no bit of respite for players who have already put thousands of minutes on their bodies as the midway point of the season arrives.

So while we get another midweek fixture to begin the month of December’s slate of games, it’s not in the Champions League. It’s the Coppa Italia.

And considering the fact that Juve’s last adventure in the Coppa turned out to be a complete mess, all I can think of now is basically a thought bubble that goes something like: PLEASE DON’T REPEAT WHAT HAPPENED IN FEBRUARY EVER AGAIN.

In what is becoming more of the reality of Juventus this season, the Coppa Italia is looking like the most realistic chance Juventus have at competing for silverware this season. Serie A? Not unless something seriously changes soon. Champions League? HA! Now that’s funny! But the Coppa Italia, that’s the wild card this season. And to actually have a chance and prevent what happened last season when Juve were ousted by a team that ended up getting relegated to. Serie B, Luciano Spalletti’s squad will first have to try and get past Udinese on Tuesday night at the Allianz Stadium.

Yes, the same Udinese squad that Juventus beat in the hours before Spalletti was officially hired to replace Igor Tudor. So maybe Juve should bring in Massimo Brambilla for the night just like they did back in late-October and see if he can replace the good mojo he had five or so weeks ago?

I say that in jest, of course. Or maybe there’s a little truth behind it, too. It worked the first time against Udinese, right?

But it’s still a little weird to sit here and think that Juventus screwing things up in the early part of their Coppa Italia campaign for the second straight season is an actual possibility. This season has shown us once again that the logic can be just thrown right on out the window, and you can’t just assume that Juve — no matter how much of the customary Coppa Italia squad rotation goes down — will stroll on through to the semifinal round because they’re simply so much better than everybody else.

Should Juve beat Udinese on Tuesday night? Yes, because these Round of 16 ties are always going to favor the bigger club.

But it’s not like Udinese is coming back to Turin for the second time in a little over a month on some kind of horrendous run o form. They’ve won two of their four games since facing Juventus, and those two losses came to two of the more talented teams in Serie A in Atalanta and Bologna on either side of the November international break.

And dare we say where Udinese currently sits in the Serie A table? Yeah, let’s just go ahead and do it: in ninth place and all of five points behind seventh-place Juventus.

So, that is no layup. We’ve seen Juve play relegation battlers at this stage of the Coppa Italia before, but not this season. There will be squad rotation for one team, but the other side will be playing with house money as they face the giants of Turin. Just like we said the first couple of rounds that Juve played last season, the goal here is to avoid disaster and just move on. They did that once, but not twice. Let’s just not repeat any sort of that history.

TEAM NEWS

• The big news of the day on Monday: Dusan Vlahovic will be out for (at least) three months due to an adductor injury he picked up against Cagliari over the weekend. At his pre-match press conference, Spalletti not only confirmed the injury, but said he expects Vlahovic to be out “two or three months” — which is more than Juve’s initial announcement told us.

• That means for the next few months, it will be up to Jonathan David and Loïs Openda to lead the line.

• Spalletti said that Mattia Perin won’t be part of the squad to face Udinese because “he’s slightly fatigued” after starting against Bodø/Glimt and Cagliari within the span of four days. That means Michele Di Gregorio, who is coming off being sick for much of the past week, will be back in goal for Juventus.

• The other injured players are the well-known ones: Gleison Bremer, Daniele Rugani, Carlo Pinsoglio and (of course) Arek Milik.

• When it comes to the customary Coppa Italia squad rotation, Spalletti said “We should expect some changes.” He also noted that the team has “struggled physically and mentally” after their back-to-back wins.

JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH

The early games of the Coppa Italia for Juventus always mean one thing: squad rotation.

So while we don’t know for sure how much rotation will be happening, it’s going to be something that plenty of folks will be quite interested in seeing as we get closer to starting lineups coming out.

All that being said, I feel pretty safe in one guy getting a start against Udinese on Tuesday night.

When it comes to Fabio Miretti’s role on this Juventus squad, it’s clearly become obvious that Spalletti is very much a fan of the young Italian midfielder. Just look at what Spalletti had to say about Miretti during Monday’s pre-match press conference:

He’s a footballer who can do many things. He has the timing of the play, of the game, because then you have to be good at knowing when to hold on to an extra touch, when to get it out of the way without touching it, and then the personality to create the unexpected from the expected. A good player knows how to create the unexpected, and he knows how to do it. He’s a playmaker who occasionally invents something. It worked well for him to play in a different role when he was on loan, seeing the ball from different perspectives, and it helped him. I think his role is a defensive midfielder. But the fact that he can adapt is something that can help the team.

That is a lot of praise for a player who Spalletti has only been working with for about a month. Miretti’s loan spell at Genoa has proven to be the right move for him personally, as he’s returned to Juventus both physically stronger and also somebody who just benefited from the consistent playing time that he received. We saw it before his injury in the preseason, and we’re seeing it again now that he’s back to being healthy and available for a manager like Spalletti who has a history of doing some good things with young players of Miretti’s age.

The sample size of Miretti’s contributions this season is still pretty small. He’s only played about 120 minutes in all competitions — which, as you can probably guess, is really not that much time at all when you think about how congested the schedule is these days. But in those minutes he’s shown that he can make things happen — and that’s not always something you can say about Juventus midfielders this season (or the season before) (or the season before that).

I feel pretty safe in saying we’re about to see Miretti get his biggest amount of minutes yet this season when Juve face Udinese. That should be another positive development for a young man who has had a positive start to the season no matter how much he’s actually played.

MATCH INFO

When: Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.

Where: Allianz Stadium, Turin, Italy.

Official kickoff time: 9 p.m. local time in Italy and across Europe, 8 p.m. in the United Kingdom, 3 p.m. Eastern time, 2 p.m. Central time, 12 p.m. Pacific time.

HOW TO WATCH

Television: CBS Sports Network (United States); TLN (Canada); Premier Sports 2 (United Kingdom); Italia 1 (Italy).

Online/Streaming: Paramount+, fuboTV (United States); DAZN Canada; fuboTV Canada (Canada); DAZN UK (United Kingdom); Mediaset Infinity (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 Bluesky. If you haven’t already, join the community on Black & White & Read All Over, and join in the discussion below.