Juventus Faces Sassuolo With Just One Italian Player

Three weeks into the 2026-27 Serie A season and one storyline refuses to go away: some of Italy’s biggest clubs are barely fielding Italians.

Como, the league’s nouveau-riche fairy tale, has already gone full foreign on multiple occasions, sending out starting XIs without a single Italian. Now Juventus, the club that has long seen itself as the backbone of the national team, are about to flirt with the same reality.

On Sunday night at the Mapei Stadium, Luciano Spalletti is expected to send out a Juventus side with just one Italian in the starting lineup.

Guglielmo Vicario. And that’s it.

The goalkeeper, still only a few games into his Juve career, is set to be the lone Italian presence from the first whistle against Sassuolo. The plan could change with a late twist from Spalletti, but the injury list and current hierarchy make that highly unlikely.

Manuel Locatelli is out long term after undergoing meniscus surgery and won’t be back until 2027. Andrea Cambiaso has been sidelined since the opening game of the season. Federico Gatti, fresh off his late heroics against AC Milan, still looks destined for the bench, stuck behind Gleison Bremer and Jhon Lucumí in the pecking order.

The result: Vicario carrying the tricolore on his own.

If the lineup plays out as expected, it will be the first time since February 2023 that Juventus have started a match with just one Italian on the pitch. For a club that once routinely supplied the spine of the Azzurri, that’s not a small detail. It’s a snapshot of where the squad is right now.

The trend has been building over the first three games. Gatti has yet to start, locked into a reserve role in central defense. Cambiaso hasn’t been available since that first outing. Zeki Çelik has held down the left-back spot in every match so far. Up front, Jeff Ekhator — one of the brighter Italian striker prospects in the setup — has been missing for most of preseason and isn’t expected back for a couple of months.

Locatelli’s injury only deepens the issue. Until his surgery, he was the only other Italian, alongside Vicario, to start all three of Juve’s opening fixtures. Now he’s gone from anchor in midfield to a long-term absentee, and with him goes another piece of the club’s Italian core.

So Juventus, Italy’s most decorated club, arrive at Sassuolo with a starting XI that will likely feature just one Italian — and one who wasn’t even on their books a few months ago.

Vicario already looks and sounds like a Juventino, fully tuned into what it means to wear the shirt and represent both club and country. But he’s barely 270 minutes into his life in Turin.

For now, that’s all Juventus have to lean on: a new goalkeeper, a single Italian voice in the huddle, trying to hold up a tradition that suddenly feels very fragile.