Atletico Madrid vs Juventus Predictions

Atletico Madrid have had a massive overhaul of their squad this summer, and if their pre-season form is anything to go off, it seems to have paid dividends. Los Rojiblancos sold 3 key players in Antoine Griezmann, Lucas Hernandez and Rodri for a combined £243m, while also selling Gelson Martins, Filipe Luis and Bernard Mensah for another £37m.

Replacing them, Diego Simeone splashed the cash they had accrued from their sales by signing teenage Portuguese prodigy Joao Felix for a club record £113m, along with Marcos Llorente, Mario Hermoso, Kieran Trippier, Renan Lodi, Felipe and Ivan Saponjic all being bought for another combined £100m.

With this new revamped squad, Atletico have had a fantastic pre-season. They started off with a comfortable 3-0 away win against Numancia, before beating Guadalajara in the ICC on penalties, which was easily their worst performance of their preseason. They followed this win on penalties with one of the most entertaining friendlies of all time, beating Madrid rivals Real, 7-3 in a game that also saw 2 red cards. Since then, Atletico have beaten MLS All-Stars 3-0 and followed that up with 2-1 win against Atletico San Luis.

Juventus have been busy in the transfer market as well, signing De Ligt from Ajax for £77m, while signing Cristian Romero from Genoa and Merih Demiral from Sassuolo for a combined £40m. Along with those signings, they have also completed two swap deals, namely Danilo for Cancelo with Man City, and Luca Pellegrini for Leonardo Spinazzola. In true Juventus style, they also picked up 3 fantastic free transfers, Adrien Rabiot, Aaron Ramsey and Gianluigi Buffon.

Juventus haven’t fared as well in their friendlies however, losing 3-2 to Tottenham in their first match in the ICC, before scraping past Inter Milan on penalties.

Given the differing form between the two sides, we think it’s difficult to see anything other than a positive result here for Atletico Madrid, and with their season starting a week earlier than Juventus’, they will most likely want to field a strong side from the off, similar to that in which they will field on the opening day of the season. For these reasons we are going for Atletico Draw No Bet, along with a 2-1 scoreline in favour of Atletico.