Giovinco has also caught the eye of
The Guardian's Paolo Bandini:
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Giovinco rises above the rancour to lift Juve's mood
The Old Lady's young playmaker underlines potential in hammering of Bologna to bring respite to Ranieri after a turbulent week
All the Old Lady really needed was a nice young man to put the spring back in her step. At 22 years old Sebastian Giovinco might still look like a child but on Saturday night at Turin's Stadio Olimpico he proved himself to be anything but. In the first 45 minutes against Bologna he was the only Juventus player to manage a shot on target. In the second he added a goal, an assist and countless more deft touches and incisive passes to help his team turn a half-time deficit into a 4–1 victory.
"Juvinco is born," bellowed Gazzetta's front-page headline on Sunday morning, though the player can hardly be said to have emerged overnight. Giovinco first trained with Juventus at the age of six, and has represented Italy at every youth level from under-16 upwards. In 2008 his 25-yard strike against Honduras was one of few highlights for Italy's Olympic side in Beijing. Earlier in the same year he was named player of the tournament as Italy won the annual under-21 competition in Toulon.
An attacking player who professes to be most comfortable in the trequartista role (just behind the attack), but who has mostly played on the left wing thus far in Serie A, Giovinco has inevitably drawn comparisons with Alessandro Del Piero. Although he is nothing like the first, it has been some time since a player emerged from the club's Primavera (youth team) with such expectation resting on his slender shoulders. And they truly are slender. Listed on Juventus's website as just shy of 5ft 4in tall, Giovinco weighs little more than nine stone.
But if he is troubled by such a burden then Giovinco does a good job of hiding it. He had played only a handful of Serie A games on loan at Empoli last season when he batted away a question about his size by declaring himself "like Sergio Agüero and Lionel Messi". Nicknamed la Formica Atomica (Atom Ant), a reference to the Hanna-Barbera cartoon hero, by team-mates and fans, Giovinco has been unafraid to carry his teams on his back when necessary and on Saturday was responsible for almost single-handedly dragging Juventus out of their post-Champions League funk.
"Last year with Empoli I proved that I was capable of playing in Serie A," reflected Giovinco, who scored six goals in 35 games for the Tuscan side including a stunning free-kick that earned his team an unlikely draw with Roma, after Juve's win over Bologna. "All I needed was a bit of continuity, which I got by playing in the last three games on the trot. Before I was playing one game and then missing the next three."
If that sounded like something of a dig at manager Claudio Ranieri, then Giovinco was quick to follow it up with praise for the Tinkerman. Thanking Ranieri for allowing him more creative freedom in the second half, Giovinco insisted he had no complaints at being used as a winger in Pavel Nedved's absence and added that he was confident the manager knew his best position.
Giovinco's words and performance came as a timely boost for Ranieri following his public falling out with David Trezeguet. Despite having only just returned from a long-term injury, the French striker was livid at having been substituted by Ranieri during the second leg of Juventus's defeat to Chelsea, and was branded a "spoilt child" by his coach after complaining over the decision to the French magazine L'Equipe.
A divided crowd at Saturday's game attempted to show support for both sides but already the suspicion is that Trezeguet will not remain with Juventus past the end of the current campaign. Rather optimistic speculation in Italy has Trezeguet moving to Lyon in a part-exchange deal involving Karim Benzema, but in the likely event that such a deal does not transpire, Ranieri may well decide his team is now capable of proceeding without the striker.
It certainly won't hurt to know he has another shaven-headed attacking prodigy waiting in the wings."