Champions League Game Time Thread: Juventus vs. Young Boys

It’s been an interesting couple of days around here ever since we last saw Juventus, a joyful group of bianconero-clad gents celebrating a 3-1 win over Napoli on Saturday in front of their hometown crowd.

These are obviously issues that are bigger than one game, one win or one sold out stadium that has 40-something-thousand people cheering for Juventus when they do something well.

My hope, and probably the same goes for many others out there, is that this Juventus game provides some kind of relief and a welcome distraction from what has been a very unpredictable and upsetting 48 hours since Mario Mandzukic was celebrating a double against Juventus’ closest Serie A competition. There’s been a relative uneasiness when dealing with Juve-related things as of late, and that’s probably not going to be changing in the next few weeks (or months) knowing what we know is now out there for everybody to have an opinion about.

But tonight, Juventus will play a game against a club from Switzerland that goes by the name of Young Boys. They will play a game in the Champions League against a Young Boys team everybody is expecting them to beat, a team that everybody is expecting to finish at the bottom of Group H. Juventus will play a game where they will try to continue their perfect season heading into the final fixture before the October international break arrives after the trip to Udine.

It’s Juventus game day.

Thankfully.

The Champions League anthem will be blasted over the Allianz Stadium speakers for the first time this season, one where European glory has been placed above pretty much everything else that the club can win this season. We will not see Cristiano Ronaldo because of his sending off against Valencia in the Champions League opener two weeks ago. And knowing what’s going on in Ronaldo’s world right now, it will be interesting to see just how often they try to show him in tribuna during the game.

But, most of all, there’s a Juventus game to watch. For the next couple of hours, we can watch Juventus and hopefully watch Juventus play well.

These games against the perceived bottom-of-the-group squad is always an interesting one — usually because of Juve’s doing for the most part. It’s not like they’ve made it easy for them against those pesky small Danish or other small countries.

For now, let’s watch Juventus. I’m good with that.

MATCH INFO

When: Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2018

Where: Allianz Stadium, Turin, Italy

Official kickoff time: 6:55 p.m. local time in Italy and across Europe; 5:55 p.m. in the United Kingdom; 12:44 p.m. Eastern Time; 9:55 a.m. Pacific Time

STARTING LINEUP

Juventus starting XI (3-4-1-2): Szczesny; Barzagli, Bonucci, Benatia; Cuadrado, Pjanic, Matuidi, Alex Sandro; Bernardeschi; Dybala, Mandzukic

Juventus bench: Perin, Chiellini, Khedira, Kean, Joao Cancelo, Emre Can, Bentancur,

Young Boys starting XI (4-5-1): Von Ballmoos; Schick, Camara, Von Bergen, Benito; Fassnacht, Sow, Sanogo, Bertone, Sulejmani; Hoarau

Young Boys bench: Wolfli, Ngamaleu, Assale’, Nsame, Aebischer, Garcia, Lauper

HOW TO WATCH

Television: UniMás (United States); BT Sport 1 (United Kingdom); Sky Sport Uno, Sky Calcio 2 (Italy)

Online/mobile: B/R Live, Univision Deportes En Vivo, Univision Deportes (United States); DAZN (Canada); BT Sport Live (United Kingdom); SKY Go 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 Twitter. If you haven’t already, join the community on Black & White & Read All Over, and join in the discussion below.