Article Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Alfio_87
- Start date
ReBeL said:
Thanks, Alfio...
I like this man's writings...
If you remember, I made a thread for his weekly analysis in Xtreme...
Anyway, I think this thread will continue that...
Nothing but a peanut
I like this man's writings...
If you remember, I made a thread for his weekly analysis in Xtreme...
Anyway, I think this thread will continue that...
Nothing but a peanut
ill b sure to tell them there from u ! miss ya down there mate
Alfio_87 said:
indead i remba hope u dont mind if i copy these ones and post them there! iam sure andy and co. would enjoy them! ill b sure to tell them there from u !
miss ya down there mate
ill b sure to tell them there from u ! miss ya down there mate
In the end, they're not my own writings, and even if they are, you know I can't say the word "NO" to you ever...
And you don't have to miss me. We'll have always a way to keep in touch:eyebrows: :eyebrows:
As Italian football awaits the results of a corruption inquiry into several of its leading clubs, including Turin superclub Juventus, I'll recall being seduced by the 'Old Lady' as a youth.
For those of us who have loved Juventus, the "Vecchia Signora" - the "Old Lady" - of Italian football since we were young, "l'emozione Juve" - the Juventus emotion - cut like a rip tide beneath Sunday's game, "la finalissima".
It was a feeling that entwined leonine pride with intense pain, as the Juventino captain, Fabio "Gladiatore" Cannavaro, lifted what felt like the world itself, distilled into a piece of gold, which he actually slept with that night, alongside his son, Christian, to honour a promise kept to the boy.
Cannavaro, like three of the other four Juventus players that won the World Cup, is now packing his bags, preparing to join the diaspora of Juventus players who will now scatter across the constellation of European football, as Juventus shatters and implodes (in his case, probably Real Madrid, along with former Juventus manager Fabio Capello and team mate, Gianluca Zambrotta).
Supporting the club, whose middle name is pride
, now entails another sentiment - shame - as Juventus awaits the verdict, tomorrow night, on the hurricane of scandal, which centres on La Vecchia Signora, also taking in Lazio, Fiorentina and archrivals AC Milan.
Milan is less likely to be sentenced to punitive relegation than Juventus, but its players are also catching the eye of those who write the cheques in Spanish and English club football. So when Italy plays its next game, as world champions, it will do so having lost the distinction - as it had in Germany - of being the only country in this championship (apart from Saudi Arabia), and most of its predecessors since 1930, fielding a team in which every player served a domestic club.
"Gli Azzurri" will become like all the others - globalised, a strong and painful 'emozione Italiana' as well as an 'emozione Juve'.
Most obviously, l'emozione Juve on Sunday night and throughout the week starts with the fact that the architect of victory in Berlin, coach Marcello Lippi, who resigned yesterday, had won five Scudetto championships for Juventus.
But while training this victorious national side, Lippi's son was put under criminal investigation for financial corruption and even 'physical menace' as part of the scandal.
While the Azzurri prepared in Florence, the scandal, centred on Juventus, was breaking over Lippi's head.
During training, barely any journalists asked about the upcoming World Cup, it was all about "piedi puliti" - clean feet - so-called because the prosecutor in charge of the case, Judge Borelli, also led the "mani puliti" - clean hands - investigation into political corruption during the early 1990s.
A million fans may have hailed the team in the Circus Maximus on Monday, but seven weeks ago in Florence, they came to jeer. 'Champions or prostitutes?" read the graffiti. Lippi told me back then that he had two jobs to do, one as a football coach, the other as a psychiatrist.
Duly, the players tried to concentrate on their game, while the grey-suited "pezzi grossi" - big pieces - in the boardrooms at both Juve and Milan hurled insults at each other from their respective towers.
But on the ground Italy's captain, Cannavaro, assured us that the team would train and play as one, focused only on the task in hand - victory in the tournament and to be ambassadors for real Italian football.
As did the rest of the squad, which was primarily made up of players from Juve and Milan, two of the big clubs in the firing line. If only the managerial high command had the maturity, professionalism and discipline of the artisans themselves.
And indeed, the idea was planted during training, as I wrote at the time, that the scandal might actually focus and sting the Azzurri into winning, not flunking, this competition.
They did the job. The shadow was a dark one, the pressure intense, but they did not distract, they did not crack.
But now, despite discourse over a possible amnesty in the wake of victory in Berlin, the almost certain upshot of the scandal is that these titans from Juventus, without whom the World Cup would not have been won, will never play club football together again.
The only player who has promised to remain a "Bianconero" - a Juve player - come what may, is Del Piero, the aristocrat of Italian football, who said: "Un gentiluomo non lascia mai una vecchia signora" - "A gentleman never leaves an old lady".
Then there was another powerful undertow beneath Sunday's match, that this grand finale was in part Juventus against Juventus.
Players who can feel each other's breath and pulse - comrades who have together won two Scudetto championships in a row - were now locked in combat with one another for football's ultimate prize.
It does recall the brotherhood between gladiators who, out of the tunnel, must fight to the death.
It is commonplace in international football for teammates to face each other, but not on this scale, not at this level and under these conditions.
From Juventus, for the Italians, came Buffon, Cannavaro, Zambrotta, Camoranesi and Del Piero. For France, veteran Lilian Thuram, David Trezeguet, Patrick Vieira and, well, damn it - what about Zizou himself?
He almost counts, although he left for Madrid, most Juventus fans hope that a slice of his heart remained Bianconero.
This 'Juve contro Juve' didn't start in the final; there was that brotherly but severe handshake between Cannavaro and Juve's forward midfield magician, Pavel Nedved, at the start of the Italy versus Czech Republic game. Have any two captains ever done that in a World Cup?
But there were almost too many Juventus moments in Sunday's final: the comradely pat on the arm and smile from Buffon to Zidane, even though the latter had just beaten the world's most impenetrable goalkeeper from the penalty spot; the penalty 'sbaglio' - error - that won Italy the cup was by David Trezeguet, facing his team mate Buffon, inverting memories of the night that the Juventino Frenchman scored a golden goal which defeated a Juventus-strewn Italy in the 2000 European Championship final.
It goes on, right up to ex-Juventino Zidane's 'testata' with Materazzi - recalling the night Zizou head-butted Hamburg's Jochen Kientz so hard, in a Champions League game, that the German needed cerebral hospital treatment (so much for all this 'stoic' Zizou).
As if all this wasn't enough, there was also the drama of Gianluca Pessotto, the Juventus general manager who had attempted to jump to his death as a result of the scandals.
This story didn't play big globally, but for Juventini in the Italian team trying to keep the domestic narrative at bay, the attempted suicide was like the cut of a scalpel, which, like the scandals themselves, could work either way psychologically.
Pessotto is Del Piero's best friend - to whom the he duly dedicated his semi-final goal against Germany. Cannavaro knew Pessotto well too, and broke down in tears during one press conference when asked about his friend in a coma.
This vortex of "emozione Juve" was churning within Italy's monastic, ascetic retreat in Duisburg and Pessotto did, in the event, manage a victory sign upon hearing Sunday's result.
Yesterday, four Juventus players for the national team went to show Pessotto the World Cup, reducing each other to tears but winning a smile from the patient, and Del Piero gave his friend the shirt he wore on Sunday night. "We also won the cup for Gianluca", said captain Cannavaro.
Do mio, 'l'emozione Juve'. Being Bianconero is itself a complicated and turbulent emotion, which connects the headiness of domination to a desperation for identity with the winner. Supporting Juventus is to draw on a tradition of honour - now betrayed - and to brave the justified envy and loathing of others.
It also entails mourning; it was 39 'tifosi bianconeri' who were killed in the carnage at Heysel Stadium in 1985 - Gesucristo, I was there. That year, bridges over motorways around Rome and Florence bore the graffiti: "Grazie Liverpool" - no translation required.
Alhough Juve play in Turin, La Vecchia Signora is a southern Italian team. In Turin itself, most Juve fans are southerners - or of Southern descent - who have come to work in the factories of the rich North, while indigenous 'Torinesi' tend to be 'Granata' - supporters of the often overshadowed Torino.
It's a pining for identity; actually, frankly, being Bianconero has its sadness, as well as its pride and especially now when, having engineered victory in the World Cup, Juve's glamour has been betrayed by the greed of the machine and its managers.
What will all those Bianconero southerners do now, after watching their heroes win the World Cup, when mighty Juve, like Sampson with his head as shaven as Del Piero's, is humiliated and cast among the minnows?
Their stars of Sunday night fleeing La Vecchia Signora in pursuit of wages and limelight, their emblematic brand now preparing for battle against that humble local team, or less.
So, as Italy's gladiator and captain Cannavaro lifted the trophy, hearts were exploding with joy. But some not entirely.
For many, there was also a bitter "bella ciao" - in the words of an old resistance song - there was also the l'emozione Juve.
In a way, that triumphal march by the World Champions - appropriately to the Circus Maximus in Rome - was also a funeral march for "l'impera Juventina' - the Juventus empire - sacked by the Visigoths of corruption and greed, not this time from the wilderness of the German provinces (another irony), but from inside Juventus' own rotten forum.
But if that victory parade was also a funeral procession for Juventus, the club could take heart from another, less publicised procession in Turin, by 60,000 fans pledging their loyalty to Juve, come what may.
So, forza Azzurri! Alla riscossa Bianconera! And here's also to the ethical cleansing of football in the country where the game is loved more passionately than in any other, except perhaps Brazil, and which has deservedly won the World Cup, thanks in part to players about to abandon the mighty, glorious - but sinking - flagship.
In South Africa 2010, the score may be leveled at Italy 5, Brazil 5. Except that the Azzurri will not be what they were on Sunday, a team that plays exclusively at home.
They will come from all over the place, like any other, and all because the beloved but disgraced Vecchia Signora will have been rightly sent to juvenile boot camp, condemned to humiliation and punishment.
E guardate come sara bella, quella ragazzaccia. Translate that for yourselves.
by Ed Vulliamy
The Guardian
For those of us who have loved Juventus, the "Vecchia Signora" - the "Old Lady" - of Italian football since we were young, "l'emozione Juve" - the Juventus emotion - cut like a rip tide beneath Sunday's game, "la finalissima".
It was a feeling that entwined leonine pride with intense pain, as the Juventino captain, Fabio "Gladiatore" Cannavaro, lifted what felt like the world itself, distilled into a piece of gold, which he actually slept with that night, alongside his son, Christian, to honour a promise kept to the boy.
Cannavaro, like three of the other four Juventus players that won the World Cup, is now packing his bags, preparing to join the diaspora of Juventus players who will now scatter across the constellation of European football, as Juventus shatters and implodes (in his case, probably Real Madrid, along with former Juventus manager Fabio Capello and team mate, Gianluca Zambrotta).
Supporting the club, whose middle name is pride
, now entails another sentiment - shame - as Juventus awaits the verdict, tomorrow night, on the hurricane of scandal, which centres on La Vecchia Signora, also taking in Lazio, Fiorentina and archrivals AC Milan.Milan is less likely to be sentenced to punitive relegation than Juventus, but its players are also catching the eye of those who write the cheques in Spanish and English club football. So when Italy plays its next game, as world champions, it will do so having lost the distinction - as it had in Germany - of being the only country in this championship (apart from Saudi Arabia), and most of its predecessors since 1930, fielding a team in which every player served a domestic club.
"Gli Azzurri" will become like all the others - globalised, a strong and painful 'emozione Italiana' as well as an 'emozione Juve'.
Most obviously, l'emozione Juve on Sunday night and throughout the week starts with the fact that the architect of victory in Berlin, coach Marcello Lippi, who resigned yesterday, had won five Scudetto championships for Juventus.
But while training this victorious national side, Lippi's son was put under criminal investigation for financial corruption and even 'physical menace' as part of the scandal.
While the Azzurri prepared in Florence, the scandal, centred on Juventus, was breaking over Lippi's head.
During training, barely any journalists asked about the upcoming World Cup, it was all about "piedi puliti" - clean feet - so-called because the prosecutor in charge of the case, Judge Borelli, also led the "mani puliti" - clean hands - investigation into political corruption during the early 1990s.
A million fans may have hailed the team in the Circus Maximus on Monday, but seven weeks ago in Florence, they came to jeer. 'Champions or prostitutes?" read the graffiti. Lippi told me back then that he had two jobs to do, one as a football coach, the other as a psychiatrist.
Duly, the players tried to concentrate on their game, while the grey-suited "pezzi grossi" - big pieces - in the boardrooms at both Juve and Milan hurled insults at each other from their respective towers.
But on the ground Italy's captain, Cannavaro, assured us that the team would train and play as one, focused only on the task in hand - victory in the tournament and to be ambassadors for real Italian football.
As did the rest of the squad, which was primarily made up of players from Juve and Milan, two of the big clubs in the firing line. If only the managerial high command had the maturity, professionalism and discipline of the artisans themselves.
And indeed, the idea was planted during training, as I wrote at the time, that the scandal might actually focus and sting the Azzurri into winning, not flunking, this competition.
They did the job. The shadow was a dark one, the pressure intense, but they did not distract, they did not crack.
But now, despite discourse over a possible amnesty in the wake of victory in Berlin, the almost certain upshot of the scandal is that these titans from Juventus, without whom the World Cup would not have been won, will never play club football together again.
The only player who has promised to remain a "Bianconero" - a Juve player - come what may, is Del Piero, the aristocrat of Italian football, who said: "Un gentiluomo non lascia mai una vecchia signora" - "A gentleman never leaves an old lady".
Then there was another powerful undertow beneath Sunday's match, that this grand finale was in part Juventus against Juventus.
Players who can feel each other's breath and pulse - comrades who have together won two Scudetto championships in a row - were now locked in combat with one another for football's ultimate prize.
It does recall the brotherhood between gladiators who, out of the tunnel, must fight to the death.
It is commonplace in international football for teammates to face each other, but not on this scale, not at this level and under these conditions.
From Juventus, for the Italians, came Buffon, Cannavaro, Zambrotta, Camoranesi and Del Piero. For France, veteran Lilian Thuram, David Trezeguet, Patrick Vieira and, well, damn it - what about Zizou himself?
He almost counts, although he left for Madrid, most Juventus fans hope that a slice of his heart remained Bianconero.
This 'Juve contro Juve' didn't start in the final; there was that brotherly but severe handshake between Cannavaro and Juve's forward midfield magician, Pavel Nedved, at the start of the Italy versus Czech Republic game. Have any two captains ever done that in a World Cup?
But there were almost too many Juventus moments in Sunday's final: the comradely pat on the arm and smile from Buffon to Zidane, even though the latter had just beaten the world's most impenetrable goalkeeper from the penalty spot; the penalty 'sbaglio' - error - that won Italy the cup was by David Trezeguet, facing his team mate Buffon, inverting memories of the night that the Juventino Frenchman scored a golden goal which defeated a Juventus-strewn Italy in the 2000 European Championship final.
It goes on, right up to ex-Juventino Zidane's 'testata' with Materazzi - recalling the night Zizou head-butted Hamburg's Jochen Kientz so hard, in a Champions League game, that the German needed cerebral hospital treatment (so much for all this 'stoic' Zizou).
As if all this wasn't enough, there was also the drama of Gianluca Pessotto, the Juventus general manager who had attempted to jump to his death as a result of the scandals.
This story didn't play big globally, but for Juventini in the Italian team trying to keep the domestic narrative at bay, the attempted suicide was like the cut of a scalpel, which, like the scandals themselves, could work either way psychologically.
Pessotto is Del Piero's best friend - to whom the he duly dedicated his semi-final goal against Germany. Cannavaro knew Pessotto well too, and broke down in tears during one press conference when asked about his friend in a coma.
This vortex of "emozione Juve" was churning within Italy's monastic, ascetic retreat in Duisburg and Pessotto did, in the event, manage a victory sign upon hearing Sunday's result.
Yesterday, four Juventus players for the national team went to show Pessotto the World Cup, reducing each other to tears but winning a smile from the patient, and Del Piero gave his friend the shirt he wore on Sunday night. "We also won the cup for Gianluca", said captain Cannavaro.
Do mio, 'l'emozione Juve'. Being Bianconero is itself a complicated and turbulent emotion, which connects the headiness of domination to a desperation for identity with the winner. Supporting Juventus is to draw on a tradition of honour - now betrayed - and to brave the justified envy and loathing of others.
It also entails mourning; it was 39 'tifosi bianconeri' who were killed in the carnage at Heysel Stadium in 1985 - Gesucristo, I was there. That year, bridges over motorways around Rome and Florence bore the graffiti: "Grazie Liverpool" - no translation required.
Alhough Juve play in Turin, La Vecchia Signora is a southern Italian team. In Turin itself, most Juve fans are southerners - or of Southern descent - who have come to work in the factories of the rich North, while indigenous 'Torinesi' tend to be 'Granata' - supporters of the often overshadowed Torino.
It's a pining for identity; actually, frankly, being Bianconero has its sadness, as well as its pride and especially now when, having engineered victory in the World Cup, Juve's glamour has been betrayed by the greed of the machine and its managers.
What will all those Bianconero southerners do now, after watching their heroes win the World Cup, when mighty Juve, like Sampson with his head as shaven as Del Piero's, is humiliated and cast among the minnows?
Their stars of Sunday night fleeing La Vecchia Signora in pursuit of wages and limelight, their emblematic brand now preparing for battle against that humble local team, or less.
So, as Italy's gladiator and captain Cannavaro lifted the trophy, hearts were exploding with joy. But some not entirely.
For many, there was also a bitter "bella ciao" - in the words of an old resistance song - there was also the l'emozione Juve.
In a way, that triumphal march by the World Champions - appropriately to the Circus Maximus in Rome - was also a funeral march for "l'impera Juventina' - the Juventus empire - sacked by the Visigoths of corruption and greed, not this time from the wilderness of the German provinces (another irony), but from inside Juventus' own rotten forum.
But if that victory parade was also a funeral procession for Juventus, the club could take heart from another, less publicised procession in Turin, by 60,000 fans pledging their loyalty to Juve, come what may.
So, forza Azzurri! Alla riscossa Bianconera! And here's also to the ethical cleansing of football in the country where the game is loved more passionately than in any other, except perhaps Brazil, and which has deservedly won the World Cup, thanks in part to players about to abandon the mighty, glorious - but sinking - flagship.
In South Africa 2010, the score may be leveled at Italy 5, Brazil 5. Except that the Azzurri will not be what they were on Sunday, a team that plays exclusively at home.
They will come from all over the place, like any other, and all because the beloved but disgraced Vecchia Signora will have been rightly sent to juvenile boot camp, condemned to humiliation and punishment.
E guardate come sara bella, quella ragazzaccia. Translate that for yourselves.
by Ed Vulliamy
The Guardian
