Juventus crush Parma to begin huge February stretch

February is going to be toughest and most important month of the 2025-26 season for Juventus. Over the next four weeks, the Bianconeri will play three of the other teams in the top six, a Lazio squad that can always decide to cause a problem, a Coppa Italia quarterfinal away from home against Atalanta, and their two-legged Champions League playoff tie against Galatasaray.

WOOF.

But before all of that, Juve had one last provincial side, Parma, to ease into the slate.

Of course, over the last few years the inability to consistently win against opponents they should be beating has been a hallmark of the Old Lady’s struggles — as exemplified by the fact that coming into the match they hadn’t beaten Parma at the Stadio Ennio Tardini since 2020. Their recent swing of form under Luciano Spalletti has seen them start to make short work of inferior teams more often, but there was still those inexplicable games against Lecce and Cagliari that stood as stark warnings that this game, sandwiched between last week’s contest with Napoli and the coming month’s monster schedule, would set up as a classic trap game.

But if there was a trap, it certainly wasn’t a very good one.

Juve had the best of Sunday’s match from the beginning. They were very nearly ahead within 60 seconds and could’ve been up 2-0 after six minutes. Parma were absolutely suffocated, and their defense — which until last week had earned accolades for its stoutness — was repeatedly pulled apart by Juve’s attackers. While they weren’t leading by two after six minutes, they did still head into the locker room 2-0 up, with goals from Bremer (off a corner kick!!) and Weston McKennie carrying them into the break on a high.

Even after they let Parma back into the game with an own goal — a mistake that in past seasons would have skewered this team — they responded with a vengeance, wiping that mistake out within three minutes and soon adding a fourth for good measure. The 4-1 final score still almost flattered to deceive; the Crusaders were quite lucky that it hadn’t been more. It was a dominant victory that propelled them into the fires of February with a ton of confidence.

Spalletti was still only missing Dusan Vlahovic, Arkadiusz Milik, and Daniele Rugani — the latter of whom was set to move to Fiorentina before the winter transfer deadline. After rotating a bit against Monaco in midweek, Spalletti went full-strength in Emilia-Romagna, sending out a 4-2-3-1 with all of his starters. Michele Di Gregorio started in goal behind the back four of Pierre Kalulu, Bremer, Lloyd Kelly, and Andrea Cambiaso. Manuel Locatelli and Khéphren Thuram served as the double pivot in midfield, while Francisco Conceição, McKennie, and Kenan Yildiz backed up Jonathan David in attack.

Parma’s manager, the up-and-coming Carlos Cuesta, hadn’t even been alive when Spalletti made his managerial debut. Yes, you read that right, his managerial debut, which he made the year before Cuesta was born. He was coming in under some pressure after a run of poor results—including a 4-0 hammering by Atalanta last week—had squandered a quick start and left them vulnerable to being sucked into the relegation battle. He countered with a 4-3-2-1, but was missing starting goalkeeper Zion Suzuki, as well as Abdoulaye Ndiaye, Matija Frigan, Lautaro Valenti, and Pontus Almqvist. Edoardo Corvi started in goal, fronted by Enrico Delprato, Mariano Troilo, Alessandro Circati, and Emanuele Valeri. Former Juve prospect Hans Nicolussi Caviglia, just arrived in Parma from Fiorentina, made his team debut, along with fellow midfielders Mandela Keita and Adrián Bernabé. Gaetano Oristanio and Jacob Ondrejka supported Mateo Pellegrino—the scorer of the winning goal in last year’s meeting at the Tardini—up front.

It took all of 45 seconds for Corvi’s night to start. Locatelli sent a ball over the top to Kalulu, who neatly squared it to an underlapping Conceição, whose first-time shot was palmed just wide of the post. Five minutes later the diminutive winger had another incredible chance when Yildiz sent McKennie into the left channel. The U.S. international pulled the ball back for Conceição, who met it with another first-time effort from seven yards out but slammed the shot off the bottom of the crossbar.

Juve continued to lay siege to the Parma goal, and it wasn’t long before the breakthrough. It came, of all ways, off a corner kick. Scoring off set pieces has been a bugaboo for Juve for the last season and a half, but this time Conceição’s delivery was excellent, and the Parma defending certainly wasn’t. Bremer started his run right at the edge of the box, almost hiding behind a row of teammates before swinging out wide of them and reaching the six-yard box completely unmarked. He rose up and sent a bullet header past Corvi as Pellegrino tried to step up to catch him, claiming his second goal of the year, and the first intentional one.

Juve didn’t let up, and instantly looked for their second goal. They nearly had it five minutes after the opener, when Conceição again saw a chance go begging, albeit this time because a last-ditch tackle from Delprato poked the ball out of his path a fraction before he could take his shot.

There were a few moments in the middle of the half that could have brought the good vibes to a halt had the results been slightly different. In the 26th minute, McKennie went in late for a challenge and planted his studs into Troilo’s ankle. He was booked instantly, but VAR Fabio Maresca held play up to check whether it should be upgraded to a red card. Thankfully, McKennie was let off with just the caution after Maresca declined to call referee Francisco Forneau to the monitor.

A few minutes later, Bernabé found Valeri in space with a good switch. The full-back decided to have a crack from 25 yards and bent the ball around Kalulu toward the target, but Di Gregorio, who until then had had very little to do, dove to parry it behind.

Juve didn’t want the game on a knife’s edge, and with eight minutes left in the half were able to push it a little closer to safety. Locatelli was again the initiator, finding a good run into space by David. David cushioned the ball into Kalulu’s feet, and the Frenchman lifted a gorgeous cross into the left channel, where McKennie met it with an off-balance volley that flashed across Corvi and into the far corner.

Juve very nearly threw away that goal a few minutes later, when Locatelli played a suicidal pass from near his own endline to the top of the penalty area that was stolen and rifled at goal by Oristanio, who was thwarted by Di Gregorio’s dive to his right. The self-inflicted damage didn’t stop at that near miss, but continued into the second half when Juve let the hosts back into the game with a comical own goal. Circati had come up from the back line to join an attack and crossed to the back post for substitute Sascha Britschgi. Cambiaso had him marked perfectly, but 5 yards from his own net he inexplicably tried some sort of heel flick that only managed to flick the ball up into his own top corner.

Previous Juve teams under previous managers would have slowly began losing their grip on the game mentally, but this new-look squad never looked back over their shoulder at their pursuers. The third goal came, ironically, from another dead-ball situation, a free kick on the left side of the field. Bremer headed the ball back across goal where it was met by McKennie. His shot hit the crossbar for a second time, but bounced back only as far as David. He poked a header into the air that looked like it was headed in anyway. but Bremer made certain no defender would recover and slammed it home.

David wouldn’t be deprived of his goal for long. In the 64th minute Concieção cut inside and fired on goal. Corvi dove to parry, but only as far as David, who collected the rebound and scored one of the easiest goals of his life.

That triggered a mass of substitutions from the Juve bench as Spalletti looked to let some of his more important players kick up their heels. Juve soaked up a few more attacks in the waning minutes as they saw out the game, but were still keen on even more. In the 83rd minute, Loïs Openda missed an open goal after Corvi came out for a Kalulu cross but whiffed at it, and in the first minute of stoppage time was desperately unlucky after he latched on to a dink over the top by (again) Kalulu and finished far post, but had the goal chalked off for offside because the semi-automatic offside system dinged him for a sliver of his heel being over the line (insert obligatory rant about IFAB and the offside rule here).

A few minutes later, Forneau brought the game to a close, and Juve bounded off the Tardini’s grass with a fantastic performance and three big points in their pockets.