In other words Manchester United are a huge success in Europe if we are gonna bring Semi finals, and finals into it.
After all Manchester United got to a lot of semis and the only final they got to , they won it.
You ask a Manchester United fan whether they have been a success then they would tell you no.
How is getting to semis and finals of a competion regarded as a success if coming 2nd in the league is not?
Winning the domestic league is light years away from being the same thing as winning CL.
If you're superior in your league it shouldn't by any means mean that you must win CL at the same time.
Getting to semis and finals of CL means that your team is indeed a great one. The final itself is an one off match against another great team, the semifinal is a 2 legs duel with another great team, and what's more important, against team that isn't from your own country ( it's the case in 99/100 matches).
If you keep winning the league and getting into the final, semi or even quarters of CL then there's no reason to be suspicious.
It would have been suspicious if a team like Inter that made it only once to the semis of CL in last God knows how many years was constantly winning CL.
It is all about winning and as far as Juve's pedigree is concerned, we have underachieved in Europe compared to our serieA dominance
We underachieved, indeed, but it's everything but a reason to suspect that our lack of CL trophies is the proof that we cheated to win domestic trophies.
Just take a look how many times in last 10 years the winner of cl was the winner of the domestic league in the respective season. Just take a look at the finalists from last years and how good they did in their domestic competition. Lately it turns out to be that you must concentrate only on one competition in order not to fail in all competitions you're taking part in.
Liverpool and Milan played the final last year. Liverpool finished 21 points behind EPL winners , Milan finished 36 points behind serie A winners.
I'm using examples from last years because these last 5-6 years are the period you're being suspicious of.
We did good in serie A but we failed in Europe because it was close to impossibile to do equally great in both of them. If we gave up from serie A in order to do good in CL then maybe we would have won the damn thing. But we decided to go after both trophies and as it turns out to be, it's not very likely to do that. Except for Barcelona in 2006, teams that win CL or play in the final are usually teams that lost their chances to win the domestic league sometime in February, March or early April.
We have only won it twice, just 1 more than Celtic. 4 times less than Liverpool, 5 times less than Milan the list is endless and this is pointless tbh
The final itself is always a 50-50 match. If we were better than Milan on penalties and if we've beaten one of Real/Dortmund we would have now had 4 CL trophies.
What would have people thought then ? They won 4 CL titles, they didn't cheat in serie A ?
Or if we didn't beat Ajax on penalties, what would people think then ? They are cheaters because they have only 1 CL and 29 scudetti ?
Small details decide these things and yet people get tricked by the numbers.
Numbers do lie sometimes !
My point is that if we were dominant in Europe as well as in serieA, there would not be grounds for suspicions but we get whooped 3-1 by panathinaikos and hamburg, werder bremen taking us to the cleaners football wise
Oh, come on.
Milan, the serie A winners in 1999 were last placed in their group consisted of teams like Hertha and Galatasaray in the same year. The superior Bayern wins only 2 points in their group in 2002/03, Milan the serie A winners in 2004 were raped by Deportivo in La Coruna 4:0. What about Arsenal's dream team from few years ago ? How come they were so superior in EPL and were being humiliated in CL ?
English fans are left scratching their heads as to how we could be so dominant in SerieA and getting stuffed by Newcastle and I am not talking about the scoreline
Tell them to start scratching their heads over the CL success of the EPL winners in the last 20 years.
How come the EPL season winner made it only once to the CL final in the year when they won the CL ?
I want to say that domestic success is a whole different world from CL success.
It's quality+consistency vs quality+luck.
After that season, no, our success has been shady in my eyes
Even if it was, CL success has nothing to do with it Denco and you shouldn't take CL failure ( by failure i mean not winning it or not playing in the final) as a proof of us cheating.
You're taking the period after 1998, right ?
Years from 1999-2006 ?
Well, lets take a look.
In 1999 we finished 8th in serie A and we played CL semifinal
In 2000 we didn't even play CL and we were second placed in A, losing the damn thing in the last round
In 2001 we were eliminated from CL groups, but we didn't win serie A back then so i really don't understand what are you implying with your examples of Panathinaicos and Hamburger. We were bad in CL and we didn't win serie A
In 2002 we were eliminated from CL in March but we won serie A in last round after Inter blew their chance by themselves. This season is probably the only example where what you're implying may be valid
In 2003 we won serie A and lost the CL finals on penalties, playing without the world player of the year, Pavel Nedved. What's so shady here ?
In 2004 we were bad in CL and bad in Italy. In CL we were eliminated by La Coruna, the same team that eliminated Milan in the next round. If Milan got La Coruna in last 16 and we got them in the quarters, would you have founded suspicious how come Juve made it further in CL than the serie A champions ?
In 2005 we won Serie A and were eliminated by Liverpool in the quarters of CL. Milan, the team from which we've "stolen" Serie A keep repeating that how come we won serie A and we were so bad in CL while they played in CL finals.
But weren't Milan defeated by the same team that eliminated us ? Wasn't Milan again lucky to get Liverpool later than we did ?
In 2006 we were so superior in serie A that it's a crime to imply that we cheated. Both us and the second placed team in serie A were eliminated by the CL finlists. Again, Milan's luck was that they got the CL finalists later than we did.