The Stadio Olimpico is the venue for a potentially explosive fixture on Sunday evening as AS Roma host the 2019/20 Italian Champions Juventus.
AS Roma kicked off the new Serie A season with a loss after they got penalized with a 3-0 defeat against Verona by the Serie A FA despite a 0-0 on the day. This was because they listed Diawara in the under-22 section of their squad instead of their 25-man squad list for senior players. They appealed the decision but the appeal was thrown out by the FA.
They will have to put that disappointment aside as they welcome the champions to the capital. They lost the corresponding fixture 2-1 to Juventus but got their revenge in Turin where they won 3-1 in a match that Juventus fielded a largely second-string team having just won the Scudetto, opting to rest their stars for the Champions League return match against Lyon.
Henrik Mkhitaryan had a new lease of life under this team last season and coach Paulo Fonseca will be counting on him to pick up from where he left.
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Juventus’stranglehold on the Serie A continued last season as they won the Scudetto for the ninth consecutive and they sent an early warning to the competition that they are intent on making it ten in a row with a convincing 3-0 win over Sampdoria in their opener. In a show of might, the champions took the lead inside 13 minutes with a debut goal from winger Dejan Kulusevski before Bonucci made it two and Ronaldo put the icing on the cake with a third late on.
New coach Andrea Pirlo will look to build on that when they visit their rivals at the capital, where they have struggled to get results in recent seasons, with the win last season being the first in their previous six visits.
The Stadio Olimpico has been one of the least productive hunting grounds in recent seasons. In the last 10 competitive matches at this ground, Juventus have only won twice and drawn three times while Roma have won the remaining five times. These games have been extremely competitive and we don’t expect this to be any different. Roma view themselves as one of the title contenders and after the opening game debacle, they will try to bounce back here. We expect a close game particularly at the start and we fancy Under 1.5 First Half goals @ 1.51 with 22Bet as our initial betting prediction for the game.
Due to the competitive nature of the fixture and the deep rivalry between these two teams, the booking market is a good one to consider for this game. If the last game is anything to go by, we could be in for another feisty one here. That game ended with 9 players going into the referee’s book. In fact, the last three straight encounters between these teams in the capital have resulted in Over 3.5 bookings. Despite the absence of crowds, we expect the game to still be edgy and we are backing Roma to edge the cards battle with a +1 handicap @ 1.50 with 22Bet as our final betting prediction for this encounter.
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