Juventus vs Inter: Spalletti's Insights on Team Dynamics
Luciano Spalletti didn’t bother dressing it up. On the eve of a pre-season Derby d’Italia on the other side of the world, he looked straight down the camera and called it as he sees it: Inter are still the benchmark.
In Perth, thousands of kilometres from Turin and Milan, Juventus and Inter will renew a rivalry that never really sleeps. It’s only a friendly, officially. Spalletti knows better.
“These are the sorts of games that help you understand a lot about the mentality of the team and whether or not we're working in the right direction,” he told reporters ahead of Saturday’s clash. Inter, he reminded everyone, remain “a very strong team like Chelsea,” and any lapse in cohesion will be punished. “We will need to be a team in every moment of the game because Inter will find advantages if we're not compact.”
That’s the theme of his Juventus: collective over comfort, structure over star system. Even when the questions turned to individuals, Spalletti kept dragging the conversation back to the group.
Yildiz to get more minutes
Kenan Yildiz is the name on many Juventus lips this summer, and Spalletti knows the anticipation around the young attacker. After a limited outing against Chelsea in Hong Kong, the coach confirmed the 19-year-old will see more of the pitch against Inter.
“He will play more than he did in the game against Chelsea,” Spalletti said, before lifting the curtain slightly on the strain of this globetrotting pre-season. Several players, he admitted, had been held out of training to manage fatigue. “It's not easy to organise these sorts of events. They take extra effort and we'll have to discuss it over the next few days to see how we've recovered.”
As for whether Yildiz has already earned a starting spot for the league opener, Spalletti refused to rush the verdict. “I will see after the game tomorrow whether he will be a starter, but I think I will let him play for a half, or almost a half.”
No guarantees. Just a clear plan: test him against the strongest team in Italy and see how far along he really is.
Market talk and a crowded squad
The transfer window, of course, hovered over the press conference. Juventus have been linked with Parma centre-back Alessandro Circati, but Spalletti quickly cooled that story.
“He's a promising young player who has shown a lot of great qualities and he could also be of interest to any club,” he acknowledged. Then came the reality check. “But right now, we only have a couple of strong routes in our sights and those do not concern him. We can't create alternative situations at the moment because we have a very large squad.”
The message is blunt: Juventus are not in the business of collecting players for the sake of it. Not this summer.
Goals by committee
If there is a lingering doubt around this Juventus, it circles the attack. Dusan Vlahovic is gone. In his place, Randal Kolo Muani and Jeff Ekhator have arrived, with Kerim Alajbegovic added as another option. The obvious question followed: where is the guaranteed 20-goal striker?
Spalletti pushed back on the idea that he needs one.
“I think we've signed players who collectively will be able to exceed those numbers,” he said. “It's not important to have somebody who scores 20 goals.”
This season, he argued, will be a grind of Thursdays and Sundays, with the Europa League stretching squads to their limits. Rotation won’t be a luxury, it will be a necessity. “It will be difficult to always play with the same players. The Europa League engages you even more than the Champions League.”
So he turns again to the collective. “Even without a physical centre-forward, we have Ekhator who has a few of those characteristics, Kolo Muani commands the area. It's a bit of an open situation, but with the players we have available, with what we've done on the market, we'll be able to make up for it through everyone's collective work.”
Alajbegovic, he added, “is somebody who can score goals. We want to help Kolo Muani's numbers. We're quite calm for the moment.”
Calm, but not complacent. The standard he keeps referencing is wearing black and blue.
Bastoni, old scars and a new test
The last time Spalletti met Inter, Alessandro Bastoni sat at the centre of a storm. A controversial incident, a dive, an infamous celebration after Pierre Kalulu’s wrongful sending off. The images stuck, especially in Turin.
So when Bastoni’s name came up, there was a chance to reopen the wound. Spalletti declined.
“It will be simple, we will continue to do what we did after that game,” he said. No grudge, no public feud. “We didn't create any big aftermath, we didn't talk about the players' behaviour on the pitch. We just want to play a good game against the strongest side in our league and learn as many things as possible to get to their level.”
That line hangs over everything. Inter are “the strongest side in our league.” Juventus, a club built on the idea that they belong at the summit, are being told by their own coach that they are still chasing.
Saturday in Perth won’t decide a title, or a trophy. It will, however, tell Spalletti something about how far his Juventus have travelled — and how far they still need to go to knock Inter off that pedestal.
