We have reached the point in the Scudetto race where very little outside of what Juventus does actually matters. Scoreboard watching will only serve the purpose of entertaining yourself rather than actually needing to because the result in another part of Italy is directly tied to the Juve result. It’s not a matter of “IF” Juventus will clinch this season’s Scudetto, it’s simply a matter of “WHEN” they will make it officially official.
What happens in other games literally doesn’t matter anymore.
Lazio could win on Thursday night, and it wouldn’t matter at all.
Thanks to a little help from our friends in Florence, Juventus’ trip to Udine could easily become the latest Scudetto day. That is because only one thing needs to happen for Juventus to clinch a ninth consecutive Serie A title: beat Udinese. That’s it. There are no other options by which a Scudetto kind of day will apply. Juventus will win the 2019-20 Serie A title, that is not in question. We could go into a long list of scenarios into what it would take for Juventus to secure yet another league title, but that’s really not necessary.
They just need to do one thing and one thing only.
Just win, baby.
Maurizio Sarri, a man who is on the brink of winning his first-ever Scudetto as a manager, was rightfully calling for his squad to stay calm ahead of Thursday’s trip to Udine. That is the very pragmatic and right-down-the-middle kind of thing to do even when you pretty much know that it’s only a matter of time before your time wins the league title.
But, at the same time, this is a team that before the win over a shorthanded Lazio side on Monday night that looked like it was limping to the finish line rather than strongly breaking through that distinctive tape. They had dropped seven out of a possible nine points against Milan, Atalanta and Sassuolo, and the overall quality in which they were doing so was more about relying on individual efforts rather than the team as a whole showing progress.
There’s another thing that the Lazio fixture provided: The end of the gauntlet Sarri’s side faced to begin the month of July. Over the course of the next three games before the season finale against Roma in Turin, Juventus will play teams that currently sit in 16th place (Udinese), 14th place (Sampdoria) and 13th place (Cagliari). That’s far and away the level of competition that Juve saw when in-form squads like Milan and Atalanta lined up against them.
So, essentially, the message here is simple: If you’re Juventus, you take care of business on Thursday night and you head back to Turin knowing that you’ve just won the title yet again. continue reading