There won't be the jingle of the great Champions League nights, but it's still Europe.
And Juventus, after the disappointment of having finished the group with five defeats out of six games played, has a duty to go as far forward as possible in the Europa League.
"As in all the competitions we face, we want to do our best" is the concept expressed on several occasions by Massimiliano Allegri, who will have a special evening on Thursday evening.
In fact, for the coach this competition is an absolute novelty, he who has always been used to Champions League stages.
"It won't be easy to challenge Nantes, the French are a very physical team" he anticipated ahead of the first leg at the Allianz Studium.
The third consecutive success came against Fiorentina, between the championship and the Italian Cup, and the bianconeri are getting back on track at 29. The next step will be to overtake the Torino-Udinese couple just a point away, while still leaning forward a little further on is Lazio, sixth at ten points and the Champions triptych formed by Atalanta-Roma-Milan at 41 points.
We proceed one step at a time, as Allegri repeats, but for a few days we think only of the new campaign in Europe.
It won't have the charm and above all there won't be the income guaranteed by the most important competition on the continent, but the Europa League also represents a goal and above all a possibility: in fact, in the event of winning the trophy, Juve would guarantee
access between the big ones without having to go through the championship.
The motivations, therefore, will be enormous for a group that has found captain Bonucci, fully recovered after the muscle injury suffered during the long break for the World Cup, and which is trying to embrace Cuadrado again, still debilitated by the bad flu that forced him to flat rate for Fiorentina.
At the Continassa the training tests continue, among the hypotheses there is also that of re-proposing the Di Maria-Vlahovic-Chiesa trident tested against the viola.
All three want to play, the one who starts a little more favorite is Fideo.
"Angel is the Juventus player who has participated in the most goals in 2023 in Serie A: four, two goals and two assists" are the numbers listed by the club to enhance the good moment the Argentine is experiencing after becoming world champion in Qatar.
Di Maria has blown out 35 candles, the bianconeri hope that he will be the one to give Juve a gift: "We all celebrate him, virtually, with that heart that he shows us every time he makes us cheer for a goal. And who knows, maybe he will give us the gift in a couple of days..."