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It’s funny, the timing of this match. Not because of the actual timing of the match. Last season it was on Halloween night, this time around it’s all of two weeks out from Christmas. But it has more to do the fact that Juventus was able to follow up arguably their worst performance of the season with one hell of a win against Atalanta last weekend. It follows the same kind of model as last season, with the first Derby della Mole of the season proving to be the turning point in what was previously a frustrating list of Juventus performances and results.
And what do you know, boys as girls?
Torino is next up on the schedule.
No, this season’s first Derby della Mole will be at the Stadio Olimpico rather than Juventus Stadium like 14 months ago. There is Christmas vibes in the air rather than everybody going to Juve’s website to see the Halloween photoshops and trying to figure out how to spend the last few hours of the final day of October. Those details are different, of course.
But Juventus facing Torino is what we all expect it to be — an absolute slugfest between Big Brother who has won the past five Serie A titles and Little Brother. It’s always that way no matter how each team is playing. Good form, bad form, whatever. Juventus facing Torino is usually as close as it gets where one or two moments could prove to be the difference makers.
The good thing in all of this, though? Juventus have put together two straight wins since the 3-1 suckfest against Genoa two weeks ago. This is the kind of response we wanted to see — especially the performance against Atalanta last weekend — and we’ve gotten exactly that.
We know how important this five-game stretch in December really is from both a Serie A standings standpoint and just an overall quality of play perspective. I’ve talked about in the last two weeks. And we also have relatively talented Juventus fullback Alex Sandro talking about it, too.
"Everyone in the dressing room is looking forward to taking on Torino in the derby, not to mention Roma the following week and Milan in the Super Cup final.
"We’ll need to be at our very best and play like a proper Juventus side to get the results that we want. We need no reminding of the importance of this little run of fixtures and as ever, our target can’t be anything other than three victories."
I would like to think that playing “like a proper Juventus side” was what we saw against Atalanta last weekend. And I would like to think that the players want to have that be the normal and consistent kind of level they play at going forward the rest of the calendar year and into January and February.
There is no doubting that playing a derby, especially one against Torino, provides its own unique challenges that we will only see a couple of times a season. But I’m certainly feeling a lot better about this team going into the first Derby della Mole of the year as compared to a couple of games ago. Funny how Juventus playing well will do that to somebody, huh?
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