Well there are a few things which are reallt true about what has been written here and there are some which are just poppycock
First of I read that Serie A is not a place to test you abilities but the Cl is, which to me means that playing Inter or Milan in serieA is not as important as playing say Olympiakos at Cl
I just want to know how many players in Juve's history have scored 100 seria goals for Juve solely
Someone even brought up the fact that in 1 season he only scored penalties which to me , that person is saying is easy forgetting that the so called only competition tha mattersd to that person, we lost to Milan and of cos by the not so important penalties
I have even read that aside from season 97/98, Dp has been rubbish
Considering that last season at one time at the beginning of last season he had scored 9/10 of our goals in firts 5 matyches or thereabout which gaves us victories and against Parma the 1 point for the draw
And at the end he scored 4 goals against Brescia and Roma which turned 2 points into 6 but of cos those are not important
He missed 6 weeks thru injury, 3 more after seriA was more or less won and still managed to score 16 but to some it was a poor season because he had not gone past 5 players to score those goals or that they were penalties
Now 4 the defence
Yes he is definitely a choker as he rarely shows up in big matches, but the examples given have been poor and could be easily defended like Ec 2002 was not choking, was just a bad miss and they were 2 chances not 3 or 4, wc 98 he could easily say he was carrying an injury but my opinon of his being a choker is the in a penalty shoot out , I have only seen Dp volunteer for 1 in his career and that was against Milan, he didn't play against Ajax and Euro200 against the Dutch he didn't take, he might say he was the 5th player but a normal penalty taker should never wait until the last kick cos it might not get that far
And in the Cl last season he definitely underperformed in all the games bar Real Madrid at home.
I think its something in his makeup which makes that h appen as he seems either to be too shy or whatever but he certainly does allow othe rppl to be the head of the team instead of taking up that mantle , first it was Zz and then its now Nedved
Another case in point is just surrendering the coveted numaber 10 to Totti just like that and settling for 7
See some ppl abuse Totti that he is arrogant or whatever but he just has so much confidence in his own ability and wants to be the focus of the sttention all the time and in by so doing dominates games more than the more talented but ultimately weaker in mind Dp
Look at Beckham, he is not the most gifted player in the world but what he does is he makes his personality dominate matches and by so doing he is what he is today
If you watch the adidas ads, u just see 1 shot of Dp and so many of the other stars, all these probably explain why in the big game situations he just fades into the background
He is not the only 1 of cos , because ppl like Bergkamp, almost the whole Arsenal team probably bar Vieira, Fowler, and some othe rplayers do choke in big matches
I also read \nedved played well in all the big games in Cl last season, maybe my eyes were deceiving me but from what I saw , he was crap against Barcelona at home, just average away even if he did redeem himself with the goal, was annonymous against Real Madrid in Spain but managed to be the best player against Milan in the final simply because he was suspended
So whilst you might take pot shots on the captain of your club , remember all the time he has been fully fit, you have been able to celebrate 5 scudettos , 1 cl, 1 intercontinental cup