Luciano Spalletti admitted Juventus’ defeat to Sassuolo last week had created doubt in the Bianconeri’s ranks, and he was delighted to see them banish that feeling by beating Atalanta.
Juve suffered their first defeat of the Serie A campaign on matchday four, conceding a stoppage-time winner to Vasilije Adzic in a 3-2 loss to Sassuolo.
However, they bounced back in style on Sunday with a 2-0 success against Atalanta and their former head coach Maurizio Sarri, with Francisco Conceicao and Bremer on target.
Juve have now won three of their first five games of a Serie A season while keeping a clean sheet in each victory for the first time since 2017-18, when they went on to win the Scudetto under Massimiliano Allegri.
And with a three-week international break now on the horizon, Spalletti was relieved to see his team cast aside the negativity of their previous Serie A outing.
He told Sky Sport Italia: “There was a moment when we were forced to defend, then we had to change something and, from there, we got back on track and played on an equal footing in the second half.
“We can certainly get better with the start of our actions and in the build-up. We could have hurt Atalanta more.
“But that’s okay, also because the defeat against Sassuolo had created some doubts for us.”
FT | | Three big points to take into the international break! @EASPORTSFC #JuveAtalanta pic.twitter.com/FW24lYXJmd
— JuventusFC (@juventusfcen) September 20, 2026
Spalletti also reserved particular praise for Randal Kolo Muani, whose performances he criticised last month, despite the Frenchman missing a big one-v-one chance with an expected goals (xG) value of 0.35 – the highest of any shot in the match.
“He had a really good game. I was disappointed when he popped up one-on-one with the goalkeeper because he deserved to score,” Spalletti said of Kolo Muani.
“But he was still very happy at the end and we joked about it. We’re all happy because now we can recover some of our strong players, who would have been useful to us recently.”
While Juve are seventh in the table going into the break with 10 points on the board, Atalanta are four points worse off in 11th.
Sarri – a Scudetto winner in his only season in charge of Juventus in 2019-20 – has now lost nine Serie A matches against the Bianconeri, his joint-most against any club (also Roma).
Though La Dea have now lost three straight games, Sarri insists there is no crisis brewing in Bergamo.
“I don’t think so, the first three games were a lower level of performance, but we have been improving,” he said.
“This team needs to have more character, to light up that fire in its soul. This is a side with certain capabilities and we need to access them.”
