All about the next game: Juventus away in the Champions League | OneFootball

As soon as VfB retur­ned from Munich with a clear defeat, they head straight to the next Euro­pean top team. In Turin’s Alli­anz Sta­di­um, they face the Ita­li­an record cham­pi­ons Juven­tus FC.

Sebas­ti­an Prödl won the 2015 “Foot­ball Quo­te of the Year” award. At the time, he said, “Munich is like a visit to the den­tist. Ever­yo­ne has to go at some point. It can hurt quite a bit, but it can also turn out fine.” That’s exact­ly how the match on Satur­day felt. But this time, after that ordeal, there’s a gift wai­ting for VfB: The Old Lady, Juven­tus FC, awaits the Young Wild Ones of VfB Stutt­gart.

While Juve is no lon­ger the power­house it once was, this is still far from an easy draw for Hoe­neß and com­pa­ny. Juven­tus remains unbea­ten in both Serie A and the Cham­pi­ons League, whe­re­as VfB has gone four games wit­hout a win in com­pe­ti­ti­ve matches. You don’t need to be a foot­ball expert to rea­li­ze that VfB needs a mira­cle to take any­thing from Turin. Of cour­se, it could go the same way it did in Madrid; VfB could keep up well, even have chan­ces to take the lead, but in the end, the opponent’s qua­li­ty will pre­vail, and all we’ll be left with is applau­se for a good per­for­mance. Per­so­nal­ly, I would­n’t mind that. I still see the­se Cham­pi­ons League games as a reward for an out­stan­ding sea­son.

That doesn’t mean I’d con­do­ne a soul­less per­for­mance like during Labbadia’s time, but we alre­a­dy saw in Munich whe­re the upper limit of this team is. We saw that VfB would need to have an excep­tio­nal­ly good day, while the oppo­nent would need a bad one, to win. Just like on match­day 32 last sea­son, when they beat a dis­in­te­res­ted Bay­ern team 3–1. And to be honest? That’s total­ly fine. I’m wri­ting this becau­se I think some of the cri­ti­cism direc­ted at VfB play­ers after the Munich match was far too harsh. I belie­ve peo­p­le some­ti­mes for­get whe­re we’ve come from. The rele­ga­ti­on play-off against Ham­burg was less than two years ago, and now we’re play­ing against Real and Juve. We’re still living a dream.

Squad Situation

Not­hing has chan­ged sin­ce the Bay­ern game. It’s still too ear­ly for Füh­rich to play, and Ster­giou isn’t fit yet eit­her. In addi­ti­on, Rai­mund, Zag­adou, and Diehl are also out.

Possible Starting Lineup

I’m actual­ly fin­ding it hard to pre­dict the lin­e­up. I expect Mil­lot to replace Rie­der, and Mit­tel­städt to be back on the left side. Demi­ro­vic might come off the bench.

Statistics

This is the first time that VfB Stutt­gart will face Juven­tus FC. Howe­ver, VfB has play­ed against Ita­li­an teams ele­ven times befo­re (UC Sampdo­ria, Tori­no FC, SS Lazio, SSC Napo­li, and Par­ma Cal­cio). VfB has only mana­ged to win once, in 1979, when they beat Juven­tus’ city rivals Tori­no FC 1–0 in the first leg of the UEFA Cup first round. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, it wasn’t enough to pro­gress, as they lost the return leg in Turin 0–2 after extra time. The most legen­da­ry match against an Ita­li­an team was pro­ba­b­ly the UEFA Cup final against SSC Napo­li, whe­re, after both legs (1–2, 3–3), they had to sett­le for the sil­ver medal against Mara­dona and co.

Conclusion

The match in Turin is pro­ba­b­ly the second high­light of this sea­son, after the game against Real. From a sport­ing per­spec­ti­ve, we are the clear under­dogs, and any­thing other than a defeat would be a plea­sant sur­pri­se. I think we will put on a good per­for­mance but will ulti­m­ate­ly lose 0–1.

Image: © Jona­than Moscrop/Getty Images