Juventus vs Inter: Spalletti Declares Rivals as Serie A's Strongest
Luciano Spalletti did not bother with diplomacy. On the eve of a pre-season Derby d’Italia in Perth, the Juventus coach looked straight at the reality of Serie A and said it out loud.
“Inter are the strongest side in our league.”
No mind games, no smokescreen. Just a clear benchmark laid down before his players step into a friendly that will feel anything but.
A Derby d’Italia on the other side of the world
Juventus and Inter meet on Saturday in Perth, kicking off at 12.00 BST (21.00 local time), a glamour fixture exported to Australia but carrying all the old weight. For Spalletti, it is less about the occasion and more about what it reveals.
“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 on Friday.
The message to his squad is blunt: Inter, like Chelsea in Hong Kong earlier in the tour, will punish any lapse.
“Inter are a very strong team like Chelsea, so we will need to be a team in every moment of the game because Inter will find advantages if we’re not compact.”
This is pre-season, but Spalletti is treating it like a diagnostic. Who can handle the level? Who understands the demands? Who can carry Juventus back towards the summit that he insists still belongs to the Nerazzurri?
Yildiz under the spotlight
One of the main focuses in Perth is Kenan Yildiz. The young attacker has become a symbol of Juventus’ attempt to refresh their frontline, and the question was inevitable: how much will he play?
“He will play more than he did in the game against Chelsea,” Spalletti confirmed.
The staff have been juggling workloads. Three or four players were kept out of training to manage fatigue, a reminder of the strain that comes with these globe-trotting tours.
“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.
“I will see after the game tomorrow whether he will be a starter (in the league), but I think I will let him play for a half, or almost a half.”
So Yildiz gets a stage, and Spalletti gets another data point. In a game against what he calls the “strongest side in our league”, half an hour here or 45 minutes there can carry real weight when the competitive season starts.
Transfer talk and a crowded squad
The market, of course, followed him into the press room. Juventus have been linked with Parma centre-back Alessandro Circati, but Spalletti quickly closed that door, at least for now.
“He’s a promising young player who has shown a lot of great qualities and he could also be of interest to any club. 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.”
That last line matters. Juventus have been active, but they are also heavy with numbers. Any new signing has to be precise, not opportunistic.
Up front, the change has already been radical. Dusan Vlahovic is gone, replaced by Randal Kolo Muani and Jeff Ekhator, with Kerim Alajbegovic also added. The obvious question followed: is there still a 20-goal striker in this team?
Spalletti pushed back against the obsession with a single reference point.
“I think we’ve signed players who collectively will be able to exceed those numbers. It’s not important to have somebody who scores 20 goals.”
He knows what awaits on the calendar. Europa League on Thursdays, Serie A on Sundays. Heavy travel. Little time to recover.
“This year, the season will be characterised by the fact that it will be played on Thursdays and Sundays, it will be difficult to always play with the same players.
“The Europa League engages you even more than the Champions League.”
It is a striking line, but it fits his logic: longer routes, trickier trips, fewer dead rubbers. A squad must stretch, not just a starting XI.
“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 is somebody who can score goals. We want to help Kolo Muani’s numbers. We’re quite calm for the moment.”
No superstar saviour, then. A collective burden, spread across new signings and emerging talent, in a season that will test depth as much as brilliance.
Bastoni, bad blood and a clear line
The build-up to any Juventus–Inter clash rarely arrives without a flashback to controversy. This time it was Alessandro Bastoni’s name that resurfaced, tied to his dive and celebration after Pierre Kalulu’s wrongful sending off in the last meeting between the sides.
Did Spalletti still carry a grudge?
“It will be simple, we will continue to do what we did after that game,” he replied. “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.”
There it was again: Inter as the standard.
Spalletti is not hiding from that reality. He is using it. In Perth, under unfamiliar skies, Juventus get a live measure of how far they have to climb—and whether this rebuilt, rotating, collective attack can really start to close the gap.
