Juventus' threadbare midfield exposes the cost of Spalletti's injury list
Luciano Spalletti rested Weston McKennie and leaned on four NextGen players for the trip to AZ Alkmaar, a squad list that reveals just how stretched Juventus have become.
Luciano Spalletti has confirmed his squad for Thursday's Europa League visit to AZ Alkmaar, and the headline omission is Weston McKennie, left out despite training partially with the group that morning, according to Football Italia.
The American midfielder is being held back for Juventus' next Serie A assignment against Fiorentina rather than nursing any fresh problem, Football Italia reports, which frames this as squad management rather than a fitness issue.
That decision would be unremarkable in isolation. It is not isolated. McKennie's absence lands on top of a list that already includes Kenan Yildiz, Manuel Locatelli, Francisco Conceiçao, Nico Gonzalez and Khephren Thuram, all unavailable for the trip to the Netherlands.
Why the midfield options have thinned to the bone
Strip out Locatelli and Thuram, and then rest McKennie, and Spalletti is left with Teun Koopmeiners and Douglas Luiz as his only senior central-midfield options for a double pivot, flanked by Pape Sarr and NextGen call-up Augusto Owusu as the squad's remaining bodies in that zone.
That is an unusually narrow base for a team facing a Thursday-Sunday turnaround, and it explains why four youth-team players were needed simply to fill out a 20-man matchday list rather than to be considered genuine rotation options.
It also shapes how Juventus can approach the match itself. With so little proven depth to shuttle the ball between lines, any in-game injury or suspension in midfield would force Spalletti into territory he would rather avoid against a side competing in the same competition phase.
The gap between squad depth and squad eligibility
Not every absence is about fitness. Arkadiusz Milik, Daniele Rugani and Edon Zhegrova are missing not because they are injured but because they were not included in Juventus' UEFA squad list for the competition, a separate and permanent restriction rather than a weekly team-news call, Football Italia notes.
Kamil Grabara and Zeki Celik are genuinely injured and add to the list, while defender Zeki Celik's absence leaves Spalletti's back-line options concentrated among Kalulu, Bremer, Lucumi, Cabal, Gatti and Kelly, alongside Cambiaso and NextGen full-back Filippo Pagnucco.
The distinction matters for how the rest of the Europa League campaign is read. A player ruled out by injury can return once fit; one excluded from the UEFA list cannot feature again in this competition regardless of recovery, which is a harder ceiling on Juventus' options than the weekly team sheet suggests.
Jeff Ekhator earns his first European involvement, and Spalletti has paired that with three further NextGen inclusions in Filippo Pagnucco, Augusto Owusu, Antonio Merola and Destiny Elimoghale, giving the squad list an unusually academy-heavy look for a European away fixture.
The presence of four development-squad players is better read as a consequence of the first-team absentee list than as a planned step in anyone's pathway. Juventus simply needed enough registered bodies to complete a travelling squad, and the NextGen group provided the readiest solution.
That does not mean none of them will play. Kerim Alajbegovic, promoted from the same pathway, already scored against Napoli in Serie A on November 1, so Spalletti has shown willingness to use emerging players when the senior options are this constrained.
What it means for the Europa League campaign
Juventus arrive at this fixture with seven points from three Europa League group games, having won twice and drawn once, a record that gives Spalletti some room to manage his squad conservatively without risking the campaign's trajectory.
That cushion is precisely why McKennie can be rested now rather than rushed through a midweek trip to Alkmaar. The calculation is that a point lost in the Netherlands is more recoverable than a McKennie injury or burnout carried into the Fiorentina match that follows.
Spalletti is due to address the absentee list and his selection thinking at a press conference before kickoff, which should clarify how much of this squad is intended to start against AZ Alkmaar and how much is there purely to make up the numbers.