Juventus begin the month of February with what could end up being a trick trip to the Tardini to face a Parma squad they haven’t seen since the opening weekend of the 2025-26 season.
A lot has happened since Juventus and Parma faced one another during the first weekend of the 2025-26 season. At the time, it look like there would be a lot more good than bad based on how Juve’s Aug. 24 win over the Gialloblu and the next few fixtures went. It, of course, didn’t last, and a couple of months later resulted in Luciano Spalletti stepping in to try and right the ship after Igor Tudor wasn’t able to.
For the most part, that has been the case.
Juventus are all of one point off the top four in Serie A. They just rebounded from their rough start to Champions League play to finish in a very respectable 13th place in the league phase table. We now know who the Bianconeri will be facing in the play-off round next month, with Friday’s draw producing a two-legged tie against Turkish giants Galatasaray, with the winner to meet either defending Premier League champions Liverpool or reigning Europa League winners Tottenham in the UCL Round of 16.
So while we know what the schedule will look like a couple of weeks down the road — which will also include the second Derby d’Italia of the season against league leaders Inter Milan, this time at the San Siro — the immediate future is the return fixture against that same Parma side that Juve opened the campaign against.
The first day of February means a Sunday night visit to the Tardini for Spalletti’s squad, who will look to keep the pressure on both Roma and Napoli. It will be the first fixture in what is an equally important month for Spalletti and Juventus both domestically and in Europe — and that’s especially so when you consider just how many big fixtures are lying in the distance once this weekend is officially a thing of the past. When they line up against Parma this weekend, it will mark the only time over the next six weeks that Juve will face a team that is in the bottom half of the table, with a gauntlet of sorts already lined up for Spalletti’s squad to truly measure where things stand as the final weeks of winter approach.
But if Juventus think they can just stroll by a Parma side that is currently 15th in the Serie A table and has just one win in their last six and is coming off a 4-0 thumping at the hands of Atalanta in Bergamo, they’ve got another thing coming to them. Parma’s just six points above the relegation zone, which still happens to have Fiorentina sitting in 18th place on 17 points. Any further struggles and Parma are likely seeing some legit relegation fight worries coming to the front of their minds, if they aren’t already.
We don’t have to go back all that long to see what can happen if Juventus don’t take care of business in the land where some of the best prosciutto in the world is curated. The last trip to Parma did not go well, and at least we know Juve have a little bit more time to potentially recover if they are to slip up once again.
And as much as this is a trip to the home stadium of a club that has just two wins in 11 home fixtures so far this season, here’s a reminder of what Juventus’ schedule looks like once they return home from facing Parma:
- Away against Atalanta (Coppa Italia)
- Home against Lazio
- Away against Inter
- Away against Galatasaray (Champions League)
- Home against Como
- Home against Galatasaray (Champions League)
- Away against Roma
Those are Juventus’ seven games up until the first weekend of March. That is a huge stretch, and one that will tell us a lot about the Bianconeri as well as many of the clubs that they will face since they are also contending for a spot in the top four, if not more than that. It’s also a stretch in which Spalletti recognizes that his squad will be tested physically at a time in which they are already feeling the effects of a very busy January that also featured seven fixtures.
“There will be a lot of games in the coming weeks, so we need to find alternative solutions,” Spalletti said during Saturday’s pre-match press conference. “The number of matches is increasing, and as far as I’m concerned, we need to increase the amount of rest. It seems to me that the players are responding well to these changes. When you play so much, you have to find a balance between playing a lot, resting a lot and training a lot.”
But at the same time …
“I have complete faith in my players,” Spalletti continued, “and they are top-class professionals.”
The feeling of faith is mutual all throughout this Juventus squad at the moment. Spalletti is quite keen on seeing what kind of response his squad has to the scoreless draw in Monaco. But, as Spalletti noted, there’s very much the feeling of tiredness and concern because of that is rightfully present. The schedule is not slowing down — especially now that we know that Juve will be in the Champions League play-off round in a couple of weeks, which will add 180 minutes (at least) onto their best players’ legs.
So could we see some squad rotation against Parma just like we saw a few days earlier in Monaco? Yeah, that seems like it’s a good idea knowing that the same kind of Coppa Italia rotation on Thursday probably isn’t as possible knowing that Juve’s opponent is one of the strongest clubs remaining. But Spalletti also can’t afford to run his best players like Kenan Yildiz or Gleison Bremer into the ground over these next few weeks no matter how important every single game may be just because they already have a lot of minutes in their legs. It’s just that point of the season, folks.
Unless it’s Pierre Kalulu, I guess, because that man just continues to play 90 minutes every single game and is continuing to basically crush it every single time. If only everybody could be like that, right?
TEAM NEWS
- Spalletti had no new injuries coming out of Wednesday night’s scoreless draw against Monaco to wrap up the Champions League league phase.
- That means the only players who are out injured for Juve’s trip to Parma are: Dusan Vlahovic, Daniele Rugani and (of course) Arek Milik.
- In case you missed the lone transfer move entering the weekend from Juventus: Jonas Rouhi joined Serie B side Carrarese on loan for the remainder of the 2025-26 season.
- As much as Spalletti said that his squad is feeling the impact of so many games in a short period of time in January, he wanted to make sure those in the Italian press knew one thing: “I’m not tired,” he said.
- Manuel Locatelli, as has been the case for more than just a couple of weeks now, is one yellow card away from suspension. With so many big games ahead on the schedule and with how he’s played so far under Spalletti, this feels just as important as it was in the build-up to Juve facing Napoli.
JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH
While Spalletti is expected to field a pretty full strength starting lineup against Parma on Sunday night, there is a chance of seeing a couple of names in there that we haven’t talked much about over these past few weeks.
So while we don’t know for sure when it comes to who is starting — it’s not like Spalletti ever gives a whole lot of clues as to who he’s going to be specifically playing — we’re just going to go ahead and speculate.
So let the speculation begin …
When going to the probable starting lineup page on the Gazzetta dello Sport website, there is basically one runoff battle going on for Juventus: Gleison Bremer or Federico Gatti. As we know, Bremer has played a whole heck of a lot over the past six weeks since he came back from his knee injury last month, while Gatti has just come back into the fold after also suffering a meniscus injury before the full reach of the chilly winter months arrived.
If Spalletti thinks that his squad is tired — and he has mentioned that Bremer’s felt some fatigue of late and that it’s something to monitor over the coming weeks — then getting somebody like Gatti who hasn’t played much (primarily due to injury) some valuable minutes ahead of crucial stretch of the season where the entire roster is going to be needed in some form or another.
In a way, getting Gatti a start — which would be his first since Juve’s Coppa Italia victory over Udinese in early December — is something that allows Spalletti to kill two birds with one stone.
Plus, there’s also this simple fact: Parma are one of the lowest scoring teams in Serie A so far this season. Through their first 22 league fixtures, they’ve scored all of 14 goals. In their six league fixtures in January, Parma scored all of two goals. They are struggling to score goals — and it’s been that way for months now.
That may be reading into the stats too much, but it also feels like a logical chance to ease Gatti back into playing more minutes while not facing an opponent that is just going to be a huge threat every time they push forward.
Either way, Gatti needs playing time. Bremer needs a rest ahead of the big stretch of games in February. Do we connect the dots and swap one in for the other? It makes a whole lot of sense.
MATCH INFO
When: Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026.
Where: Stadio Ennio Tardini, Parma, 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.
HOW TO WATCH
Television: TNT Sports 1 (United Kingdom).
Online/Streaming: Paramount+, Amazon Prime USA, DAZN USA (United States); DAZN Canada; fuboTV Canada (Canada); DAZN UK (United Kingdom); DAZN Italia (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.
Category: General Sports
