Juventus vs. Sampdoria match preview: Time, TV schedule, and how to watch the Serie A

Ahead of last Monday night’s season opener, I spent a lot of time discussing how important it was for Juventus to start the new season on somewhat the opposite footing as they did a year ago. No self-inflicted mistakes that resulted in lost points, no boring game that at best gave a midfield team a chance of an upset win – that sort of thing.

Based on Juve’s 3-0 win over Sassuolo at the Allianz Stadium, we’ve at least reached the point where the start of the season won’t be a total failure, no matter what happens in the next few weeks.

Of course, when your team wins 3-0 right out of the chute, you’ll want to see more of it. But since this is Juventus and the manager is a man named Max Allegri, what you get one week won’t necessarily be what you get the next. The season-opener win over Sassuolo was a good sign, but it was also against a Sassuolo side who were a very different side to the win over Juventus at the Allianz Stadium last season.

What’s next?

For the second time in as many games at the start of the 2022-23 season, Juventus will play a very winnable game against a not very good opponent on a Monday night. This time the opponent is Sampdoria, a team that managed just one shot on target in last weekend’s 2-0 loss to Atalanta at the Luigi Ferraris. That might not necessarily be the same way Sassuolo approached his match-up against Juventus after his embarrassing first-round exit from the Coppa Italia just days before the trip to Turin, but it’s far from a positive way of going about it Game to open campaign 2022-23.

Thankfully, unlike last season, we’re not talking about Juventus in the same way.

The problem is that Juventus will be without another key player or two in the second week of the season, which is more than we said in the first week of the season.

Angel Di Maria is definitely out due to the groin injury he picked up against Sassuolo. On top of that, Paul Pogba is injured due to his ongoing meniscus problem, which will take a few more weeks to recover. Leonardo Bonucci will also miss the trip to the Ferraris due to an injury sustained after the season-opening win.

So to say Juve are at full strength or something close is pretty much just an extension of what the squad covered last week. Although Di Maria, probably the best Juve player, will also be watching from Turin after the win at the start of the season.

Here, Allegri is put to the test again to find something that will enable Juventus to beat a team everyone expects to beat. With Sampdoria performing very poorly in the season opener, it’s a case of Juve getting their opponent at a good time again. And hopefully that will translate into a chance for three more points.

Getting two wins from the first two games of the new season would be a pretty opposite start to the 2021-22 campaign, which saw Juve only surpass six points in their sixth game of the season. (Ironically, against the same Sampdoria side they will face on Monday night.)

I don’t need to explain what kind of situation that would create as we know how last season was and how the poor start pretty much set the stage for everything else that happened.

But one thing I do know: Juventus top of the table after two games is much better than seeing them hanging around in the relegation zone, no matter how long it took.

TEAM NEWS

Let’s go through the Juventus injury list, shall we?

• Federico Chiesa is out.
• Kaio Jorge, like Chiesa, is Juve’s other long-term injury.
• Paul Pogba is out with his meniscus injury, although there is growing optimism that he could return to training sometime within the next week.
• Wojciech Szczesny is still out with a muscle injury. Good that Mattia Perin is here.
• Angel Di Maria is likely to be out for the next few weeks after being substituted off in the second half of Monday night’s season opener with a groin injury.
• Leonardo Bonucci will not play against Sampdoria due to muscle fatigue in the season opener against Sassuolo. However, he will travel to Genoa with the team.

Here are some other nuggets from Allegri’s pre-game press conference:

• Adrien Rabiot, fresh off his proposed move to Manchester United, will play according to Allegri.
• With Bonucci out, Allegri said one of Daniele Rugani or Federico Gatti will start alongside Bremer in Juventus’ centre-back.
• Summer new signing Filip Kostic “should play from the start,” said Allegri. Kostic’s ability to pass the ball – and the way he does it – has brought back memories for Allegri of his time as coach of Douglas Costa during his early days at Juve.

JUVENTUS PLAYERS TO WATCH

Because of injuries, this suddenly becomes a place where we can take things in several different directions. I think I could say that pretty much every time I go to this section and decide who to highlight. But with some of Juve’s key players missing through injury, it’s only natural to pick one of the lads to step in.

Because of the small uncertainty as to who will start alongside Bremer in central defence, La Gazzetta dello Sport says it’s 60/40 in favor of Federico Gatti others think Daniele Rugani will start – We’ll go with someone who seems a little safer to start with.

Hello Filip Kostic.

Photo by Daniele Badolato – Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images

Kostic got his feet wet and made his Juventus debut in the second half against Sassuolo. Now, with Di Maria out injured for the next week or two, it’s pretty easy to figure out in attack whether Allegri should keep the 4-3-3 he used after the ineffectiveness of the 4-4-2 before the cool break last monday evening

Kostic on the left. Right Juan Cuadrado. Dusan Vlahovic in the middle.

The obvious thing that excites you about playing Kostic is the fact that he will send cross after cross towards his Serbian compatriot in Vlahovic. We got a little bit of that in Kostic’s second-half performance against Sassuolo, where the 29-year-old winger quickly made a team effort on crosses and wasted little time to show what he was about.

Now we see Kostic from the start. So if you think he made a lot of transitions in his first Juve appearance in about half an hour into the game, I suspect it will be more or less similar in his first Juve start.

That’s why Kostic was signed – because he can do so much and be so dangerous on the left wing. As much as Allegri may ask him to defend, his top priority will always be offense because that’s just how he thinks. He should be pushing forward, he wants to create chances for himself and, perhaps more importantly, his team-mates.

And you know that the first time a Kostic cross finds Vlahovic and results in a goal, the emotions are going to be huge. Hopefully it won’t be long before that happens.

GAME INFO

When: Monday 22 August 2022.

Where: Stadio Luigi Ferraris, Genoa, Italy.

Official kick-off time: 8:45 p.m. local time in Italy and Europe, 7:45 p.m. in the UK, 2:45 p.m. Eastern Time, 11:45 a.m. Pacific Time.

LIKE WATCHING

TV: BT Sport 1 (UK).

Online/Streaming: Outstanding+ (United States); fuboTV Canada (Canada); BTSport.com, BT Sport App (UK); DAZN (Italy).

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