Friday Poll: With Chiesa and Di Maria healthy, should the 3-5-2 still be a thing?

For the past few weeks, something has been (mostly) the case as compared to the first half of the 2022-23 season: It’s the simple fact that Federico Chiesa and Angel Di Maria have been healthy at the same time. We know why that was the case for all of August, September and October, with the former making his return from his major knee injury in the couple of games before the World Cup break.

But, that was November.

We are now about to hit the second weekend of February, one where Chiesa is set to face his former team for the first time in a good amount of time when Fiorentina makes its way to the Allianz Stadium on Sunday evening.

Over the last week or two, the Italian media has speculated if this is the time in which Juve manager Max Allegri will take advantage of having two of his top attacking players not named Dusan Vlahovic and pair them together in the starting lineup alongside one another, thus creating a tactical and formational shift that we haven’t seen much since the 3-5-2 became a thing this season.

To this point, Allegri has essentially alternated Chiesa and Di Maria when it comes to who starts up front the last couple of weeks. In some ways, Allegri is still slowly working Chiesa back into the squad on a full-time basis. Only one of Chiesa’s seven Serie A appearances has come from the opening whistle and he has yet to start back-to-back games despite Juventus playing on multiple fronts.

The same thing, in a way, can be said about Di Maria during the first six weeks of the new year. That’s simply because the guy battled multiple injuries in the opening 3 ¹⁄₂ months of the season and, more importantly, is 35 years old with a lot of miles on those tires.

Playing both Chiesa and Di Maria from the start would clearly be a boon to somebody like Vlahovic, who is coming off a fantastic all-around performance against Salernitana this past Tuesday night. But it would cause the kind of shift that might not be something Allegri would want to commit to from the opening kickoff. Ah, decisions, right?