If Juventus were to start off the Club World Cup on a positive note, they certainly had the chance to do so against competition that were not exactly deemed anywhere close to the best in the tournament. There’s the big showdown with an English giant at the end of the group stage, but the final fixture of Matchday 1 was Juve’s first opportunity to show some intent in the United States.
It didn’t take long Wednesday night to do just that.
Within the opening 30 minutes at Audi Field, Juventus had already run out to a three-goal lead. The Bianconeri — albeit in their brand new all-blue away kit — didn’t take their foot off the gas despite that early lead, with Randal Kolo Muani securing a first-half brace to go along with goals from Francisco Conceição and Kenan Yildiz to put Juve up 4-0 going into halftime. It was all they needed to open their Club World Cup campaign with a 5-0 victory over UAE side Al Ain, with Conceição also claiming a brace before the final whistle was sounded.
It was an incredibly efficient night in front of goal for a Juve side that, as we know all too well from the Serie A season, is something we haven’t been able to say all too often of late.
Juventus recorded four shots on target in the first half.
They scored four goals in the first half.
That’s what we call efficiency, folks.
The catch in all of this, of course, is that four of Juventus’ five goals were scored by players who are still on loan at the club and may not even be a part of next season’s roster if something can’t be worked out later this summer. We know Juventus want to keep Kolo Muani and that there are certainly talks to come in the next few weeks. Conceição, though, is a hard situation to read — so much of the first few weeks of the Igor Tudor era was filled with him barely playing … but now? It’s hard to say, and it’s not like Juventus couldn’t use a player with his trickiness and creativity on the roster come the start of the 2025-26 campaign.
For now, though, we will just enjoy them in a Juve shirt while we still can.
And against Al Ain, they most definitely were two of the driving forces — along with the ever-present Yildiz — of Juve building their big first-half lead that allowed them to relatively cruise in the second half on an incredibly muggy night.
Yes, the competition level is not what Juventus will see the rest of the way in the Club World Cup — especially if they are to make it into the knockout rounds like just about everybody is predicting them to do. This was always going to be the situation when we saw the group schedule announced and Juventus got two incredibly winnable games within the span of a few days with Manchester City laying in wait for the group stage finale.
But Juventus did what they couldn’t do against a lot of the lower-level competition in Serie A this season when facing Al Ain — both win and put plenty of distance between themselves and the competition. It’s a good first step at the Club World Cup, and winning by five goals certainly helps the old goal differential if it will potentially come down to that.
One win down. Hopefully plenty more to come. Not a bad start to the group stage, I’d say.
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS
- Juventus are undefeated in their new light blue away kit. Take that, haters.
- Juventus are undefeated at the Club World Cup when Weston McKennie wears the armband. Take that one, too.
- We’ve seen a lot of head coaches dressing like it was more of a summer friendly during these opening days of the Club World Cup, essentially rocking their training gear or something a little more relaxed with the hot summer weather. Not Igor Tudor, who was out there with a regular suit on despite it being an incredibly muggy night in Washington, D.C.
- By the time it was halftime, that humidity figure was up to 95%. My goodness.
- That header from Kolo Muani on his first goal. That sure was a cool finish.
- Oh, you want something that’s potentially even cooler? Well, then there’s Kolo Muani’s finish on his second goal, with nice little shot with the outside of his foot so that the ball bends in at the far post and doesn’t go wide. Just perfectly executed.
- That finish from Yildiz, too. All of Juventus’ goals against Al Ain had something really nice to go along with it and were far from simple finishes.
- The fact that Yildiz placed his shot where he did and go as much on it in terms of velocity while completely draped by an Al Ain defender just shows you how strong he is despite being just barely 20 years old. That boy, he’s pretty good.
- Don’t worry, I didn’t forget Chico. That little man was everywhere. And the fact he had enough juice in his legs for that fantastic run that nearly set up Kolo Muani for a hat trick was a great capper to a great night.
- Playing Inno della Juventus after each goal was not something I was expecting. But it’s FIFA, so I guess you never really know what they’re going to roll out.
- Go ahead look up the leader of this nearly all-female refereeing crew, Tori Penso. That’s what you call a resume right there.
- Your assist leader after Matchday 1 of the Club World Cup: Alberto Costa.
- Also leading the Club World Cup in assists after Matchday 1: Khephren Thuram.
- (And Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, but he plays for Paris Saint-Germain now, so he’s doing pretty OK these days.)
- But seriously, though, seeing Alberto Costa do good things — regardless of how you feel about the level of competition Juventus faced on Wednesday night — was really nice to see. If he has a nice tournament, he’s going to be carrying some really positive vibes into next season.
- Nicola Savona playing in the center of Tudor’s back three was not something I was expecting to see when the starting lineups were announced. But here we are, and I think it went pretty admirably.
- It wouldn’t be a Juventus game these days if we didn’t at least get one instance, regardless of how much time he’s played, if Dusan Vlahovic didn’t try and bulldoze his way through a couple of defenders and see it result in him being dispossessed. You can just count on it.
- It would have been very amusing if we saw Juve struggle mightily to score on set pieces throughout the 2024-25 season only to see Lloyd Kelly score on one of their first corner kicks at the Club World Cup. He was close!
- We got 45 whole minutes of Douglas Luiz against Al Ain. How ‘bout that?!
- Welcome back, Pierre Kalulu. Nice to see you again.
- The one downside of the big first-half lead? How Juventus began the second half. Thank goodness for Michele Di Gregorio being good and for VAR coming to the rescue or else there would have been no shutout.
- With their five-goal night, Juve are now atop Group G on goal differential. Take that, Pep!
