Remember the WC 2006 final? Of course you do. You also remember the 8 Juve players playing in that same final. 8 players. That's like the entire team playing.
We Juventini always take pride from that fact and we rarely miss a chance to repeat it as a proof how strong that team was. And it was.
Yes, you can't really claim being the best of the best because you have 8 players in a WC final, but boy does it say that it was a strong team.
Now almost 4 years after that final we're in the knock-out stage of the 2010 world cup. 16 teams, 368 players.
You know how many of them play for Juve?
One- Felipe Melo.
Or lets make it 1 and a half because we still own Tiago but we know that he's as good as gone, while Caceres isn't our player anymore. Our best players Diego and Del Piero weren't at the world cup. Our Azzurri stars and "stars" were humiliated and they're somewhere in Rome now. Our expensive transfers, Amauri and co., home too.
Now, one can say that Juve were badly coached, had injury problems and invent many more excuses, but the fact is only 1 out of the 368 players remained in S. Africa is a Juve player. If the 8 juventini in 2006 were telling how good we were, the single Juventino in 2010 is screaming how bad we are.
Inter have 7 players remaining. Expected. They are the best in Italy. Roma have 4. Milan have 4 too even though only T. Silva is there from their starting XI.
Udinese, yes Udinese has 3. Napoli has 2. Andujar and Morimoto give 2 to Catania. Yup, Catania has more players at the WC than Juve,
Juve have 1.
You know who else has one player remained in South Africa? Cesena has. Atalanta has one player too and so does Reggina.
Thanks God for that 0.5 Tiago gives us, so we can take pride in having more players at the WC than Cesena and Reggina do.
Looking forward to 2014.