The new Juventus Stadium had seen just fifteen minutes of official match play when, having had his own route to goal blocked by not one but two opposing players, Andrea Pirlo checked his run and almost without looking clipped a ball over the top of the static Parma backline. Floated perfectly, it dropped to the feet of Stephan Lichtsteiner who had cut in unnoticed from his position on the right. He controlled the ball with one foot before slotting past the helpless Antonio Mirante with the other, the ball settling into the back of the visitor’s goal. Their new home had its first competitive goal and Juventus had not only found a new hero but, finally, a quality right-back to fill the team’s most long-standing void.
Another Match-Fixing Scandal Shows Off Italy’s Ugly Image
A police raid on your pre-tournament training camp would, for any other nation, be far from ideal preparation with the opening match merely days away and yet – given their history – it should perhaps cause more concern for Italy’s opponents than the Azzurri themselves. Indeed, as exactly that happened at their national team headquarters at Coverciano on Monday morning it was hard to avoid a distinct feeling of déjà vu. The day began earlier than usual for a number of people on the peninsula, most notably defender Domenico Criscito who was woken and handed a search warrant just before 6:30 am as part of an investigation into the latest match-fixing scandal to engulf Italian football.
Mister Gone: Credit Conte But Don’t Dismiss Delneri
Bewildered, disliked by the majority of supporters and looking ever more out of his depth, Gigi Delneri entered the press conference at the Vinovo training complex last May and informed the audience of reporters that his time in Turin had come to an end. “There will be a new Coach at Juventus next season,” declared the sixty-one year old in his heavy and notoriously difficult-to-understand Friulani accent, going on to add that he had been informed three days earlier, just after leading the club to what was the tenth defeat of the season the previous weekend.
Beginning with straight-forward wins over Estonia and Faroe Islands as well as a hard-fought draw with Northern Ireland at Windsor Park, Italy’s relatively simple path to Poland and Ukraine was all but sealed when Serbian Ultra’s caused their game in Genoa to be called off. Eventually awarded as a 3-0 win to the home side, it saw Cesare Prandelli’s men take a virtually unassailable lead at the top of the standings which they would never relinquish.
Dropping just four points and scoring twenty goals while conceding just twice, it was one of the most dominant qualification campaigns the Azzurri have ever enjoyed. While the quality of the opposition can be called into question – as Republic of Ireland’s dismantling of second placed Estonia in the playoffs clearly attests – Italy should rightly be a team to fear once the tournament proper gets underway.
After spending many years as a much derided and decidedly second rate competition, the Italian Cup has enjoyed a renaissance in recent seasons and, having ended the undefeated campaign of Serie A Champions Juventus, Napoli will be hoping it can do the same for then. Twenty-two years after their last triumph in the same competition, the San Paolo club may have finally begun to emerge from the lengthy shadow of Diego Maradona.
During the build up to the Champions League Final on Saturday, television cameras picked up shots of John Terry talking with Fabio Capello on the pitch at the Allianz Arena. This sparked numerous manger-in-waiting comments as the Italian has been subject of much speculation linking him to the Stamford Bridge club in recent months. Despite many of these rumours appearing to hinge on the outcome of the Final, one needed only to witness the images of Roman Abramovich looking thoroughly unimpressed as a jubilant Roberto Di Matteo confronted the club owner on his way to pick up his winners medal.
Italian football has always been home to some of the world’s biggest names and, while many factors have contributed to the lure of the peninsula losing some of its former sheen, there are still many top players plying their trade in the Bel Paese. Many of these – including Gigi Buffon, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Andrea Pirlo – have been analysed in depth here on WhoScored.com but, over the course of this season, we have also looked the surprising and less widely appreciated men leading a number of statistical categories in Serie A. Now the 2011-12 campaign has ended we can see who tops the various charts, be they an unknown or a famous name.
With a combination of good fortune and great play, they did what no other club has managed to this season and win against recently crowned Serie A Champions Juventus. Unbeaten in all competitions, the Turin giants finally succumbed in this, the Italian Cup Final, unable to thwart the advances of Napoli’s ‘Three Tenors’. It was a game which almost perfectly encapsulated everything these two teams have come to represent in a campaign from which both emerge with great credit.
The last time Juventus won the Coppa Italia (and did the double) back in 1995
Mariella Scirea opens her husband’s section of the new Juventus Museum
Arrivederci Alessandro Nesta
While he introduced himself to the world with a mistimed training ground challenge that broke Paul Gascoigne’s leg almost twenty years ago, Alessandro Nesta departed Milan in a press conference far more in keeping with a career in which has been synonymous with perfection and consistent brilliance ever since he first found space in the Lazio first team shortly after that incident with the England midfielder.
Well, there it is. The Old Lady of Turin is back at the summit of Serie A, Champions of Italy for the first time in five years. After the hell of Calciopoli and the purgatory of a season spent in Serie B, Andrea Agnelli, Beppe Marotta and Fabio Paratici delivered the ingredients for a successful team and the intensity, drive and intelligence of Antonio Conte moulded them into exactly that. In winning the Scudetto in his debut season on the Juventus bench the 42 year old coach has followed in the footsteps of some true greats of the modern era, matching the feat accomplished by Fabio Capello, Marcello Lippi and Giovanni Trapattoni.
It has quickly become the most televised fence in Italian football. Little more than eighteen months after Serbian supporters had scaled it, the security barrier at Genoa’s Luigi Ferraris stadium was the focus of attention this past weekend as the home fans decided enough was enough in what has admittedly been a disastrous season for the Ligurian side. Much like the Balkan crowd who caused that Euro 2012 qualifier with Italy to be abandoned, the Rossoblu faithful simply could take no more on an afternoon that had seen their team concede four goals without reply to a team battling relegation.
Forward Thinking: Striking Problems Ahead Of Euro 2012
The leading scorer charts of the European Championships reads like an impromptu Hall of Fame inductee list. Gerd Muller, Michel Platini, Marco Van Basten, Alan Shearer, Patrick Kluivert, and David Villa have all ended as the tournament top scorer, each reinforcing the reputation they already had established before the competition began.
It felt like forever, but finally it came, falling from the sky like a gift from God. Roberto Baggio controlled the ball with a typically divine touch, floating past Edwin van der Sar before sending the ball into the back of the empty goal. For lowly Brescia to earn a point away to mighty Juventus in such fashion was, in itself, something of a miracle but this was so much more. This goal and – more importantly - the incredible pass which led to it, announced the arrival of Andrea Pirlo to a wider audience.
Italian football journalist, contributor to IBWM, SI.com, Calcio Italia magazine and ESPN Soccernet. Co-founder of JuventiKnows.com
Born in the year la Vecchia signora won her first International trophy, witness to the triumph and tragedy of Heysel, lo Scudetto di Fortunato, the glory of Rome, the pain of Calciopoli and the purgatory of Serie B.
