Serie A Sunday: Some things never change

Juventus is the most loathed side in Italian soccer for a good reason. Like baseball's Yankees, La Vecchia Signora is a team comprised of bloodless, oft-inhuman assassins who are hell-bent on destroying the weekends of opposition fans. Juve's 4-1 curb-stomping of Roma in the Eternal City two seasons ago — before the team was delightfully demoted for fixing matches — is still perhaps the signature loss of the last three campaigns for the Giallorossi, along with the historic 7-1 thrashing delivered by Manchester United in last year's Champions League. Hell, the Bianconeri were still the story in Serie A last season, and they weren't even participating. Juve is the Greenwich of Italian soccer; Serie A's metaphorical clock is inevitably measured against the Torino side.

So don't blame Roma fans if they were willing to invest a little more in Sunday's match against Juve in the Stadio Olympico than, say, an equivalent tilt against Inter. For a team that is finally bold enough to set the Scudetto as a reasonable, if not expected, goal, the ability to take three points at home against Juve still stands as one of the most telling yardsticks. And, by that account, the 2-2 draw is exactly the kind of result that leads the rest of us to wonder if this season will turn out to be, like the match itself, nothing more than an entertaining diversion that leaves Roma partisans ultimately disappointed.

The knock on teams like Roma is always the mysterious and undefined lack of "killer instinct," something that apparently only shows up in big games (that I Lupi hadn't allowed a goal until Trezeguet's 16th-minute header Sunday is likely a distant memory in tomorrow's sports pages). While such sentiments may be nails on a chalkboard to the more analytically inclined, game's like Sunday's serve as the foxhole for an atheist; it just seemed that Juve was going to make something happen in the game's twilight. And, of course, more that thing happened: the officials took over, looking past blatant fouls and, without much in the way of explanation or justification (or much precedent), awarded Juve the late throw-in deep in Roma's territory after Cicinho apparently took to long to put the ball in play. That throw-in, of course, led to Iaquinta's equalizer in the 87th minute.

Perhaps it's facile to lay everything at the feet of the officials, and it's certainly true that Juve's luck was the product of design, or at least spirited play in the game's final 10 minutes. Ultimately, one becomes breathless trying to identify all of the ways winners keep winning, and frustrated by trying to figure out whether or not an emerging team has yet to achieve that status. It's early enough in the season to wait it out and see if my favorite nickname of the Roma side — La Magica — is fitting with respect to this campaign.

But one thing is clear after Sunday: Juve's still got it in them to beat any team in Italy, and perhaps any team in Europe, though they won't have a chance at the latter this season. And, in that respect, La Vecchia Signora has proven to be as stubborn in its ways as we expect of the elderly.