All eyes will be on one man going into Juventus’ Champions League play-off first leg against PSV Eindhoven on Tuesday evening.

To say Randal Kolo Muani has had a sizeable impact since arriving in Serie A would be an understatement. The Frenchman has scored five goals in his opening three games, becoming the first player to score in his first three games since the legendary Roberto Baggio in 1990. Already he’s only three behind the struggling Dusan Vlahovic, despite the Serb playing 16 games more.

Those goals have propelled Juve back into the race for the top four, and reports in Italy suggest the club will attempt to retain him in the summer, either with a longer loan or an outright signing once Vlahovic is moved on.

Paris Saint-Germain’s loss has certainly been Juve’s gain. With Luis Enrique signing a new deal to keep him in the French capital for a further two years, Kolo Muani’s future at the club doesn’t look particularly bright.

The former Roma coach banished the striker at the beginning of the campaign, and the 26-year-old had only played 14 times by the time he left for Turin, which amounted to only 453 minutes on the pitch. The Old Lady rescued him from his Parisian nightmare, and now he’s repaying her with goals.

Kolo Muani has given Juve’s attack an extra dimension since arriving. Blessed with pace and better technique than Vlahovic, he can run the channels, take players on and has the ability to glide past players in individual duels.

A textbook example of this is his first goal in the win over Como. Receiving a ball between the lines from Nico Gonzalez, Kolo Muani ran at Como defender Alberto Dossena, skipped by him and leathered his shot into the roof of Jean Butez’s net from a tight angle. It was the kind of goal Vlahovic simply isn’t capable of scoring.

Now all focus turns to the clash with PSV in Turin. These two sides met on the opening day of the competition in Turin, with Juventus emerging with a 3-1 win.

Goals from Nico Gonzalez, Weston McKennie and a particularly sublime goal from Kenan Yildiz sealed an emphatic win at the Allianz Stadium, and many believed the sky was the limit under Thiago Motta. Five months on and things look very different.

In Europe, Juventus only picked up another two wins in the expanded group phase, and failed to win either of their last two, being held by Club Brugge and easily dismantled by Benfica at home.

In the league, they couldn’t buy a win for what felt like an eternity. From November through the beginning of January Juve accumulated seven draws. They weren’t losing, but they weren’t winning many.

Since Kolo Muani’s arrival, they’ve won three of the last four and took the lead against table toppers Napoli at the Stadio Diego Maradona before being turned over in the second half. The Bianconeri’s form has improved, but performances haven’t.

The jury is still out on Teun Koopmeiners after some disastrous performances, especially in the win over Como. The Dutchman has struggled all season-long and looks light years away from the player he was just a year ago with Atalanta.

La Gazzetta dello Sport handed him a 4.5/10 rating. So bad was Koopmeiners against the Lariani that he produced a mere 14 successful passes in an hour of play. Koopmeiners was also at fault for the home side’s goal, when he was dispossessed by Patrick Cutrone in his own third.

Fabio Capello, speaking as a pundit on Sky Italia, believes the weight of the shirt — and the €60m price tag — is becoming a burden. 

Yet the fact that Juventus are now starting to grind out victories is perhaps a sign the club is going in the right direction under Motta. The wins against Como and Empoli weren’t pretty, but winning ugly has always been in their DNA.

The Juve that lines up against PSV will be the youngest in the club’s history in the Champions League.

With an average age of 25 years and 171 days, Motta’s men will beat the previous youngest, held by Marcello Lippi’s stellar side of 1997-98. That team, containing a young Alessandro Del Piero, Pippo Inzaghi and Zinedine Zidane, took to the pitch in the semi-final against Monaco in April 1998 with an average of 26 years and 22 days.

With an outlay of €200m last summer, making a deep run in the Champions League is imperative for the club’s balance sheet. The club has, to this point, earned €63m, seeing off PSV over the next eight days would bring in another €11m. 

Moreover, with a return to the competition next season uncertain at this stage, the pressure is on Motta to forge a deep run and hoover up more Uefa prize money.

If Juventus are to advance to the round of 16, then one suspects Kolo Muani will have a big role to play in it.