The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 57: Return of the Max

For the first time in weeks, Juventus had almost as much going on within the field of play as the club currently does off the field as we inch closer and closer to the start of the 2021-22 season next month.

As rumors continue to swirl regarding players who might be arriving and others who might be leaving, Juve opened up their preseason friendly schedule on Saturday with a 3-1 win over Serie C side Cesena, a game that was will probably remembered more for who wasn’t there as a result of post-international duty holidays rather than who played.

Regardless of the lack of starting-quality players available to Max Allegri in his first friendly back at the club, that is where we start this week’s episode. You know, the chance to actually talk about Juventus game action again — you can’t turn that down no matter how many Under-23 players were in the starting lineup and then took the field in the second half.

(Also, go ahead and do the average jersey number worn by everybody who played in the second half. Gonna go ahead and guess it’s nowhere close to the numbers that folks like Paulo Dybala and Juan Cuadrado will be wearing this coming season.)

On this week’s episode of The Old Lady Speaks, we discuss:

• General thoughts on Max Allegri’s first friendly since returning to manage Juventus, a 3-1 win over Cesena on Saturday.
• The potential departure of Merih Demiral, who out of all the Juve players rumored to be leaving right now looks like the most likely to actually leave.
• The ripple effect of a potential Demiral sale on Juventus’ central defense depth chart.
• Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival in Turin and that it looks he will be staying with Juventus for the 2021-22 season more than ever before.
• The return of Twitter questions after a couple of weeks hiatus.

You can listen to Episode 57 of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast here:

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