Italian Supercup Preview: Juventus-Inter
8/20/2005 4:09:00 AM
The Italian champions face the Italian Cup winners in the traditional summer face-off that kick-starts the Serie A season.
BACKGROUND
This prestige match, since calling it a truly important trophy is stretching it, has taken place in Italy since the late 80’s and Inter were one of the first winners after they won the 1989 Scudetto. But since then they have never featured in this match again, while Juve have been in it seven times and won it four times, most recently in 2003 when they beat Milan on penalties. Despite all this it’s hard to point out a favorite to win this match. Perhaps Juve have a bit more confidence and swagger after winning Serie A this year after a long and hard battle against Milan, but Inter have nothing less than them in terms of quality available. The nerazzurri so far have had a very positive 2005, if you exclude the quarter-final Champions League loss to Milan. After such a convincing second part of the season, culminating in the Coppa Italia win, the expectation among the Inter crowd is perhaps even bigger than in other years, where they practically started from scratch every time.
As usual, they have acquired several new players, but this time for positions where they needed them most, such as central defence (Samuel) and the left flank (Wome and Solari). Most of these new players however didn’t feature in Inter’s first official match of the season, the 2-0 away win at Shakhtar Donetsk, and it’s likely Mancini will also start this match with the team that earned the chance to actually be in it (i.e. the group of players that won the Coppa Italia). This means we might have to wait for Figo and Samuel’s debut with the Inter shirt. However, while Inter have practically a full squad at their disposal, Juve have to deal with a number of injured absentees. Both Camoranesi and Nedved are doubtful, as well as Vieira and Thuram, while Buffon will be out until about November with a bad shoulder injury. To compensate that loss Juventus have acquired Milan’s second-choice goalie Christian Abbiati on loan, because trust in ageing substitute Chimenti was limited.
Juve and Inter have very similar playing styles (both coaches favour a 4-4-2 system) so it will be interesting to see how entertaining as a spectacle the game will be. Last Sunday Juventus were involved in a friendly match with Milan that ended up being anything but, with many goalscoring chances and hard tackles. In that match the champions lost a number of players due to injury, and both teams today had better not play too roughly to avoid losing players ahead of the start of Serie A, which is certainly more important than this one match. Imagine, for instance, if Adriano would get badly injured in this game like Buffon did, it would be disastrous for Inter’s season as a strong start will be crucial if they want to challenge for the title. With Vieri having departed to Milan, Cruz, Martins, and Recoba don’t offer the same guarantees that “Bobo” and the Brazilian do. But despite all this when Juve and Inter meet each other there is always a lot of rivalry involved and players never hold back, not even in friendlies. Recently Inter have done very well in Turin, winning the last two Serie A fixtures there, so Juve should be at least as motivated as the Nerazzurri for this match.
TEAM NEWS
Juventus
See above.
Inter
Mihajlovic and Burdisso are unavailable, while players such as Coco, Karagounis, Van Der Meyde, Kily haven’t been called up because they are on the verge of leaving the club.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Juventus)
The brilliant Swede is rapidly growing into a global football superstar, and perhaps we can already say he’s probably the most skilled Swedish football player of all time (even though his background is Jugoslavian). At Ajax he was known as a hothead who had brilliant skills but failed to score on a consistent basis. But after dazzling the Serie A faithful with 16 goals in his debut year in the toughest league in the world, he is now widely recognized as one of the strongest strikers around. The way he has developed on the field as well as off it since joining Juventus has been amazing. Although still prone to the occasional head-butt to an opponent irritating him, gone are the rows with players and manager he was known for in Holland (that kind of problems almost never occur at Juve however). Recently against Benfica he scored a screamer of a goal, a long-distance volley that was almost too good to be scored in a friendly, and that perfectly demonstrated the strength of this player.
Adriano (Inter)
At Inter he is always the one to watch. Possibly the most complete striker in the world at the moment, his most important virtue is perhaps that he scores decisive goals in the most important matches. Remember the Confederation Cup (don’t be embarassed if you’ve already forgotten it though..)? Brazil won it and he was top scorer with five goals, including two in the final against Argentina and two in the semi-final. The Coppa Italia Inter won came because he scored twice away at Roma. 10 goals in the last Champions League. The only Inter player ever to score a hat-trick in a European match (against Porto). 7 goals made him top scorer also in the Copa America tournament which Brazil won in 2004. The list of impressive numbers goes on and shows no sign of ending...
POSSIBLE STARTING XI’s
Inter (4-4-2) :
Toldo; J. Zanetti, Cordoba, Materazzi, Favalli; Stankovic, Cambiasso, Veron, Solari; Martins, Adriano.
Juventus (4-4-2):
Abbiati; Zebina, Cannavaro, Kovac, Zambrotta; Olivera, Vieira, Emerson, Nedved; Ibrahimovic, Trezeguet.
PREDICTION
The Scudetto winners traditionally tend to win the Supercup as well, so I think Juventus will shade it, perhaps after extra time.
Juventus-Inter 2-1
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