Juventus' Starting XI Features Just One Italian Amid Injury Crisis

In a Serie A season already full of strange sights, one image stands out: Italy’s biggest clubs taking the field with barely an Italian in sight.

Como, the league’s nouveau-riche fairytale with billionaire backing, has already gone all-in on the foreign-core experiment, starting multiple games without a single Italian in the XI. Now Juventus, the club that once formed the backbone of the national team almost by default, are edging uncomfortably close to that territory.

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

Guglielmo Vicario. And that’s it.

Juventus’ Italian core reduced to one

The situation isn’t born from some ideological shift as much as from a brutal run of injuries that has ripped through Spalletti’s squad. Manuel Locatelli, the heartbeat in midfield and one of the few remaining symbols of the club’s Italian identity, is out long term after undergoing surgery to repair his meniscus. His return is not expected until 2027.

Andrea Cambiaso, who opened the season as a key option on the flank, has been missing since the first game and remains sidelined. At left back, Zeki Çelik has taken every start so far, locking down that spot while Cambiaso recovers.

In central defense, Federico Gatti — hero off the bench last weekend with his late-game intervention against AC Milan — still looks likely to remain just that: a substitute. Gleison Bremer and Jhon Lucumí currently sit ahead of him in the pecking order, leaving Gatti as an impact option rather than a starter.

Up front, one of Italy’s more intriguing young striker prospects, Jeff Ekhator, has barely been seen. An injury that dragged through much of preseason has pushed his return back by a couple of months, robbing Spalletti of another domestic option.

Strip all that away, and what’s left is Vicario, standing alone as the only Italian expected to hear his name read out in the starting XI.

If that plays out as anticipated, it will be the first time since February 2023 that Juventus have started a match with just one Italian on the pitch.

A strange look for Italy’s most Italian club

This isn’t a sudden drop-off. The first three games of the 2026-27 season already offered a hint of where things were heading. Locatelli and Vicario were the only Italians to start all three. With Gatti stuck behind Bremer and Lucumí, and Cambiaso injured almost immediately, the domestic presence has been thinning out week by week.

Now Locatelli is gone until 2027. Ekhator is rehabbing. Cambiaso is still not available. Gatti is battling for minutes.

So the club that for decades supplied the spine of the Azzurri will likely walk into Reggio Emilia with just one Italian in the lineup — and he’s a summer arrival who has only logged around 270 minutes in a Juventus shirt.

Vicario talks and carries himself like a Juventino, and he clearly understands the weight of the shirt and what it means to represent both club and country. But for a fanbase raised on lineups packed with Italian internationals, the idea of Juventus’ tricolore being carried by a single, brand-new face between the posts feels jarring.

On Sunday night, the most telling image might not be the scoreline, but the team sheet.