Back In The Big Time

One of the great fix­tures in Euro­pean foot­ball returns tonight when Real Madrid travel to Turin to take on Juven­tus. After a home vic­tory against Zenit St Peters­burg and a sur­prise 2–2 draw in Belarus against BATE in their open­ing games back in the Cham­pi­ons League, the arrival of the Madrid giants con­firms the Old Lady’s return to the upper ech­e­lons of Euro­pean foot­ball after the Cal­ciopoli scan­dal saw them rel­e­gated to Serie B for the 2006–2007 season.

It has been a rapid return to the big time for Juven­tus. Under the tute­lage of for­mer cap­tain Didier Deschamps they secured pro­mo­tion from Serie B at the first attempt. Deschamps quit after just one sea­son and ex-Chelsea boss Clau­dio Ranieri was hired with the mis­sion of get­ting them back to the top as soon as pos­si­ble. In his first sea­son he led them to a very respectable third place finnish and as a result, a place in the Cham­pi­ons League qual­i­fy­ing rounds.

To see them return to their nat­ural place within Europe’s elite so soon makes you ques­tion whether they were pun­ished severely enough for their part in the match-fixing that shook Ital­ian foot­ball. How­ever the deci­sions of top play­ers like Gigi Buf­fon, Alessan­dro Del Piero and David Trezeguet not to jump ship have been vin­di­cated and Del Piero enjoyed arguably his finest sea­son yet upon return to Serie A, scor­ing 21 league goals and win­ning the Capoc­an­non­ieri award for being the leagues top goalscorer for the first time in his illus­tri­ous career.

Return­ing to the Cham­pi­ons League was vital for the recov­ery of the club as the money that the tour­na­ment gen­er­ates will be much needed if they are to chal­lenge for major hon­ours again soon. In their absence Inter have gone from strength to strength.

Over the sum­mer Juve splashed out on Palermo striker Amuari and Sevilla’s Dan­ish mid­fielder Chris­t­ian Poulsen. While the sign­ings were met with mixed response from the fans, the money spent showed the clubs intent on chal­leng­ing Inter’s strong­hold on Serie A and mak­ing an impres­sion in the Cham­pi­ons League.

How­ever the opti­mism sur­round­ing the new cam­paign has soon faded away. Injuries to key play­ers have exposed the lack of strength in depth in the squad, espe­cially defen­sively where Buffon’s excel­lence in goal had saved them last sea­son. In mid­field they have lacked cre­ativ­ity, which has led to crit­i­cism of the sign­ing of Poulsen. The Dane is a very capa­ble defen­sive mid­fielder but when paired with Momo Sis­soko in the heart of the mid­field there is no spark and this puts even more pres­sure on the age­ing shoul­ders of Del Piero. Injuries to Camoranesi and Ranieri’s lack of faith in Tiago have also meant that the gifted young mid­fielder Sebas­t­ian Giovinco has been thrust into the spot­light and has been expected to deliver.

Back-to-back defeats against Palermo and Napoli have left the Old Lady in 12th posi­tion, already 7 points behind Jose Mourinho’s Inter and Ranieri is feel­ing the heat. Gen­eral man­ager Jean Claude Blanc had admit­ted that things aren’t going accord­ing to plan. He said: “There’s dis­ap­point­ment, it is a dif­fi­cult moment”, he con­tin­ued, “How­ever, we do not stop here, we know we have to work hard, we have to get orga­nized espe­cially with all the injuries we have: we are Juven­tus, we have to win even with the play­ers available.”

The pres­sure on Ranieri hasn’t been helped thanks to his pub­lic spat with Inter man­ager and the man who replaced him at Chelsea, Jose Mour­inho. Ranieri had said “Unlike Mour­inho I don’t need to win to be sure about what I am doing.” Mour­inho replied, dig­ni­fied as ever, by say­ing: “Ranieri was right, I do need to win things to be sure of what I am doing. That’s why I have won so many tro­phies in my career. By con­trast he has the men­tal­ity that win­ning isn’t cru­cial and at nearly 70-years-old he has just won a Super Cup and other small tour­na­ments. He is too old to change his mentality.”

Harsh as Mourinho’s words may have been, espe­cially given that Ranieri is 57, there is an ele­ment of truth to them which has not been lost on the Juven­tus fans. The club have a his­tory of great man­agers includ­ing Marcelo Lippi and Fabio Capello and when com­pared, Ranieri falls a long way short.

All this means that they are renew­ing acquain­tances with Real Madrid at a bad time. Bernd Schuster’s side may have strug­gled in the Cham­pi­ons League over the last cou­ple of years but they have won the last 2 La Liga titles and have put together a squad that, if not as good to watch as the Galac­tico era team, is far more effi­cient. They are a team who seem capa­ble at scor­ing at any­time and as they showed in the Madrid derby at the week­end, they have the men­tal strength and hunger to keep search­ing for a win right until the end.

The last time the 2 clubs met was back in April 2005 when Juven­tus over­turned a 1–0 first leg defeat in the Bern­abeu to go through 2–1 on aggre­gate. A vic­tory tonight would be more than wel­come. Not only would it give them 7 points and put one foot in the next round, it would also ease the pres­sure on Ranieri and pro­vide him with more time to prove his doubters wrong.

Tagged as: Alessandro Del Piero, Claudio Ranieri, juventus, real madrid