Milan & Inter Dealt Like Champions In The Transfer Market, Juventus Dealt Like Pretenders
While two of Italy's biggest club sought to fill gaps in their squad, another did their best to right off their Champions League hopes, as Goal.com's Kris Voakes explains.
There were some big winners and even bigger losers to be found across Europe in the January transfer window, and not just in relation to a certain €41 million striker with less top flight goals to his name than Amauri has scored for Juventus. The Bianconeri themselves may well have offloaded their misfiring forward, but that may well prove to be the single positive from what has been a disastrous month on and off the field for the one-time transfer kings.
With their bid for a return to the Champions League having been compromised by a return of only four points from five games so far in 2011, their dealings in the market have been even more shameful. With issues to resolve in both full-back slots, cover needed at centre-back, new life due on the left side of midfield and a proxy for Fabio Quagliarella required up front, it is arguable that the club has barely met any of the targets they were set a month ago.
This is Juventus Football Club everybody… Juventus Football Club. You know them, 27/29-time champions of Italy and winners of 51 major trophies in total. That Juventus. And they’ve managed to add in the past month a 33-year-old centre-forward who could hardly hit a barn door with a banjo these days, the reserve centre-back of a club struggling in the bottom half of the Bundesliga, and a striker who this weekend chalked up only his second ever 10-goal top flight return.
So where was the left winger? What about the chronic full-back problem? There wasn’t even any real intention ever expressed by the club to go out and fix these obvious issues. They will now have to make do with the right-footed trio of Simone Pepe, Jorge Martinez and Claudio Marchisio in a form of ballottaggio for the left midfield slot while at full-back they are stuck with Zdenek Grygera, Marco Motta, Hasan Salihamidzic, Fabio Grosso, Armand Traore and, once fit, Paolo De Ceglie, all of whom have struggled to various degrees when called upon this season.
Up top they have plugged the gap in terms of numbers at least by introducing Matri and Toni, but the Cagliari striker has cost them €2.5 million for a loan – yes, a loan! – and the former Italy front man has scored eight goals in two years. Matri may well prove to be a decent acquisition, but he hardly strikes as being the kind of player who will score the goals necessary to push Juve back into Champions League contention, especially when you consider five of his 11 goals this season have come against Bari, Brescia and Lecce, all of whom sit in the bottom four of Serie A right now.
Here in Lombardy, the twin forces of Milan and Inter have almost served as perfect examples as to the kind of January that the Old Lady could have had. With the Rossoneri needing experienced defensive cover, new legs at full-back and a rugged midfielder who can dictate the play, they promptly went out and acquired Nicola Legrottaglie, Didac Vila and Mark van Bommel. Add to the mix Urby Emanuelson and Antonio Cassano, and you’ve got a pretty convincing month’s business. Sure, there are question marks over the signing of Legrottaglie in particular, but if he plays five games in the remainder of the season and Milan win the title, he’ll have done his job.
Inter have also dealt well. They reinforced their numbers in defence and midfield with Andrea Ranocchia and Houssine Kharja respectively before moving quickly to secure highly-rated left back Yuto Nagatomo after the latest Davide Santon horror show against Palermo on Sunday. And of course, there was the signing of Giampaolo Pazzini to freshen things up in attack.
Which brings us back to Juve. For while it would have been a struggle to persuade Sampdoria president Riccardo Garrone to part with Pazzini given his falling out with former charge Giuseppe Marotta last summer, his resolve should at least have been tested with a big money bid. After all, Pazzini would have been perfect for the Old Lady given that Serie A rules forbade them from signing number one target Edin Dezko. Add to that their indifference to the potential signings of Nagatomo and, more glaringly, the virtual free agent Cassano, and one is left wondering exactly why Marotta and Luigi Del Neri sat and twiddled their thumbs for a month while near-perfect fits were allowed to move to rival clubs.
Juventus still talk the talk. They say they want Champions League football again. They reckon they want to be winning Scudetti once more in the coming years. But right now, they are not walking the walk. The club is being run with less direction and conviction than any other club in the top eight in Italy. Juventus Football Club will once again be missing from the Champions League in 2011-12, and the origins for that failure will be traced back to January 2011.
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