Italian Serie A, Round 12: Saturday’s Juventus-Roma Match Kicks Off A Tasty Set Of Fixtures

Well, technically the match between Fiorentina and Cesena kicks off this weekend’s fixtures, but that’s really just the undercard for Saturday’s big face-off between Juventus and AS Roma. Come on, you know how this internet game works. More people are looking for Juve-Roma. Traffic baiting, son.

Yes, we will be covering the match between Cesena and Fiorentina.

Cesena got a big result mid-week with their win over Lazio, but they are still very much in a relegation fight and should be there all season. Fiorentina are going in the opposite direction after a disappointing mid-week loss against Roma in which they played very poorly in the first half. They upped their game in the second, but their improvement wasn’t enough to overcome Roma’s momentum. Fiorentina are the better team in this fixture, but Cesena have some talent. Stephen Appiah, Luis Gimenez, Marco Parolo, and Erjon Bogdani have put a few teams to the sword this season and Fiorentina would be best advised to not take them lightly.

The big heavyweight bout between Roma and Juventus shouldn’t exactly be Lesnar vs. Velasquez due to the teams’ relative disappointing starts, but I promise you it will be bigger and better than Mir-Cro Cop. How many of you did I just lose? 95% of you? Sorry.

Midweek, Roma went with Marco Borriello, Francesco Totti, and Jeremy Menez in the attack, benching Mirko Vucinic. The Montenegran international has been the best of these four players over the end of last season and the start of this season, but Roma actually looked better with him on the bench. Does Claudio Ranieri opt to sit him again? Tough call.

Juventus were fairly poor against Brescia in their last match, but they have shown some serious flashes of brilliance in previous matches. This is still a Juventus side that is coming together and that is without two of its most talented players, Milos Krasic and Giorgio Chiellini. At present, it’s hard to predict what we’re going to get from Juventus, so it’s best to just watch the match and let the pictures do the talking instead of trying to predict exactly what’s going to happen. Juve are as unpredictable of a side as you’re going to find in the major leagues in Europe.

The action starts at 12 pm ET with Cesena vs. Fiorentina and continues at 2:45 with Juventus hosting Roma.