Andrea Agnelli has targeted further success as Juventus prepare to step into an exciting new era.
The club president, speaking at the launch of the official Bianconeri shirts for the upcoming 2012/13 campaign, covered a wide range of subjects throughout this morning’s press conference at Juventus Stadium.
Thank you, Nike. I need to thank Nike, between mid-May and mid-June we started thinking about how to design this shirt. In particular how to represent the Scudetto we’d just won, which is the club’s thirtieth title, and the issue surrounding the three stars. All true Bianconeri fans feel that we have won 30 titles because they are the 30 won on the pitch.
The legal action continues. This Scudetto victory starts from a while back, from the events which happened in 2006. Juventus have respected the decisions of the sporting justice system, but new facts have since emerged. The Federation Council had the opportunity to bring everything to a close but decided not to make a decision. Since then a series of legal actions have arisen which have little to do with sport, but are strongly related to the protection of individual dignity and respect, specifically of the club I represent as both president and supporter. Our legal action continues and will be monitored.
We have won 30 titles, no stars on the shirt. Last year’s extraordinary result produced a lack of balance. When we count our title wins, they are 30. Instead, the arithmetic of the Federation adds up to 28 and this is why we’re unable to find an agreement. We no longer acknowledge the Federation’s arithmetic and therefore we’ve removed the stars from our shirt, because we don’t acknowledge their total. From this we came up with the idea of the ‘30 sul campo’ [30 on the pitch] inscription, written below the club badge.
The Lega is working. Hearing people say that nothing happens at the Lega is starting to annoy me. I don’t want to say the atmosphere’s been calm over the past two years and that there hasn’t been friction and difficulty, above all after the Melandri laws were introduced, but over the past six months they have been doing a serious job with the nomination of two ad hoc committees for TV rights and governance of the Lega, thus allowing them to represent us as a credible voice when dealing with other institutions. We could also consider the other issues such as the laws on brand protection, stadium and sporting venue laws, the number of professional teams in agreement with other leagues and the revision of the sporting justice code which today is relatively obsolete.
Professional sport is different from grassroots sport. We need to work out a mechanism which controls sport, which is still represented by the principles of fairness, but also by a high-level professional world. Two sets of rules are required: professional sport on one side and grassroots sport on the other.
Betting, a serious issue. Betting is a phenomenon which must be tackled in the most serious manner. It’s unthinkable that criminal organisations could influence the final outcome of games, above all if we think that we work with people’s free time and passion. For this we need to find a way in which ordinary justice runs parallel to sporting justice. We have our manager who has been written about several times in newspapers for an affair he hasn’t yet been able to respond to.
Calm about Conte. On Friday, Conte will finally be questioned in Rome by Palazzi. I’ve known Antonio for 20 years, he only thinks about victory. I’ve spoken to him on plenty of occasions and I’m calm, he will have the opportunity to give his version of events and then he’ll be able to return to manage the team.
The number 10 shirt. The players will decide who wears the shirt. We understand the weight it carries. We’ve had many excellent players wearing number 10 throughout our history, I hope the next one has the same success as his predecessors.
Allegri’s comments. Allegri’s quotes saying that we have 31 titles including the Serie B championship? They make me smile. Normally I only comment about Juventus and not about other teams. But according to this concept, Milan should have two stars...
Aware what Juventus means. When we began last season, the critics predicted a fifth or sixth-place finish, at the end of the year after the campaign we’ve just had, it was said that this Juventus side would not have had any problems in playing the Champions League semi-finals. We begin with the awareness of what Juventus is about, what it means to wear and honour this shirt. What does this Scudetto represent to the family? I’d like to focus on what this Scudetto means to Juventus. When I say Juventus, I’m talking about all the fans. The Scudetto celebrations we saw in May, with 400,000 people on the streets, showed strong emotions and feelings. I called it the Scudetto of anger and pride, because that’s exactly what it represented, the anger for what happened and pride at returning to the top. We’ll now look to move forward with clear targets.
The year ahead. We’ve got an important year ahead of us, in which we’ll have to confirm the good things we’ve done. Having said that, it’s a year just like any other for Juve because, as Boniperti’s quote says “winning isn’t important at Juventus, it’s the only thing that counts”. And to underline this concept, as it has now become our mission, we’ve printed this statement on the collars of our new shirts. Juventus will always start out with the aim of winning every competition: it’s in our history and DNA.
Source: Juventus.com
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