Juventus vs. Atalanta match preview: Time, TV schedule, and how to watch the Serie A

Two straight weekends have passed with Juventus having the chance to jump up into second place because Maurizio Sarri and Lazio dropped points.

You’ll never guess what the situation is as Juve head over to Bergamo ...

Yes, Lazio has dropped points again, losing for the third time in four games with a 2-0 loss to Milan early Saturday. That opens the door ... again ... for Juventus to try and get some breathing room between themselves and Milan in fifth place. With Inter’s win over Roma later in the day on Saturday, Juve and their arch-rivals are both even on 63 points, so things are very much tightly bunched after the first half of a weekend where almost all of the top six is facing one another and jockeying for table position.

So now as Juventus face sixth-place Atalanta — which has won its last three games and is starting to show plenty of signs of life again — the emphasis on getting all three points and trying to prevent things from getting even more compact than they already are.

Juve manager Max Allegri has said Saurday that he’s doing the math in his head and predicting what it will take for his team to finish top four and get a Champions League spot for next season. That’s good, and it’s nice to have something to shoot for in these final weeks.

But the thing about Allegri’s Juventus is that these are the kinds of games in which they’ve truly struggled to consistent pick up points in. It is those head-to-head against the top six that have given Juventus plenty of issues over the last two years, and the fact that Atalanta is kicking off these final five games means that Allegri’s squad with one of the more in-form teams in Serie A just shows how challenging this last stretch will be. (Don’t forget that there’s the two legs of the Europa League semifinals thrown in there, too, folks.)

Just how much help getting back to their winning ways midweek against Lecce will be put to the test in Bergamo during the Sunday lunchtime kickoff.

There have been some good things to take out of the last couple of Juventus performances as compared to when they were losing three straight and things were looking quite dire in terms of how they were closing the season. But, as obvious as it is, Lecce is by no means anywhere close to the same class as Atalanta — and that means that the same mistakes that Juve made a few days ago can’t be repeated again this time around.

It wasn’t so long ago, back when Juventus’ had a 15-point penalty attached to its name, that Atalanta’s struggling form was what was allowing the Bianconeri to cut into the distance between sixth and seventh place. The thing that prevented Juve from overtaking La Dea was the simple fact that they, too, were hit with inconsistent results.

So now, as Atalanta finds its footing and regains form to make the race for the Champions League that more interesting, Juventus need to do the same if Allegri wants to see second place become a reality and to just simply stay in the top four.

But with how up and down this team has been all season, that is anything but a certainty.

TEAM NEWS

• Leandro Paredes is suspended for the trip to Bergamo after picking up a yellow card against Lecce on Wednesday.
• Allegri said at his pre-match press conference how things are going to stack up in attack, but most in the Italian media are expecting Dusan Vlahovic and Angel Di Maria to start up front against Atalanta.
• Regarding what his team is focused most on this final month of the season, Allegri said it’s “finishing in the top four and doing well in the Europa League.”
• With Mattia De Sciglio knee injury midweek that will rule him out the rest of the season (and beyond), Tommaso Barbieri has been called up from the Next Gen squad to provide some depth on the right wing. We should probably expect that to happen for pretty much all of Juventus’ remaining games.
• Allegri said “I have to try to get the best out of him in the remaining matches” when speaking about Paul Pogba’s role within the squad during the final month of the season.

JUVENTUS PLAYER TO WATCH

OK, yeah. This one is easy. That’s what happens when you break a lengthy scoring drought.

Photo by Sportinfoto/DeFodi Images via Getty Images

Dusan Vlahovic went 773 minutes between scoring goals against Serie A opposition. That’s basically 8 ¹⁄₂ games worth of minutes without doing what you are known best for doing and what you are paid very handsomely to try and do every single time you step onto the field.

That streak is now over with.

Now we get to see how much actually finding the back of the net and ending that streak will potentially help Vlahovic close the season on a high note after so many weeks of frustration.

The line of thinking whenever a striker ends the kind of run Vlahovic was just on was that once they see the ball get across the goal line again then the sheer mental block that comes with an extended scoring slump is now gone. Knowing how Juventus tend to play, we don’t know if Allegri is going to be willing to repeat the kind of open game that we saw on Wednesday. We certainly know that Atalanta are going to attack, they’re going to throw people forward and, being who they are as the third-highest scoring team in the league, probably going to find the back of the net with how they’ve played of late.

We’ll see if that line of thinking applies to Vlahovic on Sunday afternoon and these final few weeks of the season.

But one thing is for certain: Seeing that dude with a giant smile on his face as he celebrated his first league game in a couple of months sure was pretty dang nice to see. And you know for damn sure that he is going to want to ensure that Wednesday’s goal was not a one-off or just a blip on the radar as this final handful of games have quite the importance attached to them.

MATCH INFO

When: Sunday, May 7, 2023.

Where: Gewiss Stadium, Bergamo, Italy.

Official kickoff time: 12:30 p.m. local time in Italy and around Europe, 11:30 a.m. in the United Kingdom, 6:30 a.m. Eastern time, 3:30 a.m. Pacific time.

HOW TO WATCH

Television: TLN (Canada); BT Sport 2 (United Kingdom); Sky Sport Uno, Sky Sport 251, Sky Sport Calcio, Sky Sport 4K (Italy).

Online/Streaming: Paramount+ (United States); fuboTV Canada (Canada); BTSport.com, BT Sport app (United Kingdom); DAZN, 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.