Breathe easy defenders of Serie A. For the tireless Pavel Nedved is ready to hang up his boots at the end of this season. Brought to Italy by il Boemo, Zdenek Zeman, in the autumn following Euro '96, the Czech will leave an indelible mark on Italian football.
Confined to history will be the sight of Nedved running through opposition defences like Rambo bounding fearlessly across enemy lines. Instead of a knife clenched between his teeth or a Kalashnikov swinging from his shoulders, Nedved carries a ball between his feet. Many a goalkeeper will tell you it’s no less intimidating, no less deadly.
For Nedved still possesses one of the most powerful shots in world football. At his peak in 2003 when he won the Ballon d’Or and dragged Juventus to the Champions League Final – a game that he would sadly miss through suspension – Nedved scored 14 goals. In that season he became the driving spirit of the Bianconeri, an achievement all the more remarkable when you consider the scepticism that greeted him on arrival in Turin just a year beforehand.
Juventus had sold Zinedine Zidane to Real Madrid for a world record £50m and faced the unenviable task of replacing him. Nedved was the club’s answer. The Italian Press weren’t convinced. Sure, they said, Nedved is a good player but he’s nowhere near capable of producing the art of Zidane. By the end of the year, the topic was no longer up for discussion.
Nedved, perhaps, has represented Juventus better than any other player in the first decade of the 21st Century, both in good and in bad. He is a winner, a Stakhanovite, ready to run through walls to get his team across the finish line.
And yet that mentality, that work ethic has sometimes called his career into question. The comparison with Rambo is apt because Nedved has often gone down as if shot by wily Vietcong or pesky Red Army infantry rather than tackled by a fellow footballer.
His habit of diving and tricking opponents only served to pour more fuel on the fire that would eventually consume Juventus and lead to their relegation from Serie A in 2006. All those who shared that view could only watch with wonder, though, as Nedved stayed with Juventus and guided them out of the dark and into the light.
It’s hard to imagine a more devastatingly direct footballer than Nedved. And maybe that’s why he fit in so well at Juventus. He only ever saw things in black and white.
Channel4
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