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.

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Welcome back, you old bags

"This should be a dignified year for our soccer. We need to provide certainties
in a country where all anyone talks about is soccer."
- Serie A President Antonio Matarrese

The 2006-07 season was worse than anyone could have expected, in just about every sense imaginable, for Serie A. To say Italian Soccer was "shamed" would be an understatement; a league that already suffers from an inferiority complex thanks to sharing a continent with juggernauts like the Premier League and La Liga was made to look ridiculous last season. The match-fixing scandal that sent down Juventus and led to point reductions for four other teams reinforced the notion abroad that Serie A was a relatively lawless league, as did the mid-season Sicilian derby riot in Catania, which resulted in the death of police officer, a suspension of matches for more than a week, and half the remaining league games being played behind closed doors. That kind of negative publicity — make that outright embarrassment — will likely have the effect of a talent drain on the league, as players with free transfers decide that perhaps they'd rather ply their trade somewhere a little less unstable.



It's difficult to play the hypothetical game, but it's not a stretch to say that had those two events not taken place, 2006-07 could have been a banner year for Serie A. Inter put up a season for the ages, and while it's easy to say that Juve's absence made it less credible, it's not a stretch to believe that the nerazurri would have lapped the field no matter what (though a poor showing in the Champions League took some lustre out of the season). Milan further augmented its position in European football with a rousing march to the Champions League title, and Roma's trip to the semifinals — mostly on the strength of Golden Boot winner Francesco Totti — was no small feat either. Even better, that it was those two particular teams, who play the most attractive football Italy has to offer, succeeding on the international stage took the wind out of the sails of critics who trot out the same, tired crap about Italian soccer being the aesthetic equivalent of a molasses waterfall.

That said, it just wasn't the same without Juve, the Yankees of Italian soccer. Beyond the fact that anything that happened last season comes with a qualification ("Yeah, but that was the year Juventus was beating up on the Riminis of the world"), the TV schedule was noticeably absent of watchable games. And one game into the new season, The Old Lady put together a game that served notice to the rest of league, featuring a four-goal flurry in the final 20 minutes of its game against relegation-bound Livorno en route to a 5-1 victory. Yes, this team isn't of the same class as the 2005-6 squad, thanks to the post-penalty defections of a handful of the team's best players, but it's a team good enough to earn a Champions League berth and be considered one of the four teams with a legitimate shot at the Scudetto.

It's trendy to say this could be one of the greatest seasons in Serie A's recent history. Inter is perhaps even more frightening this season, after picking up Roma standout left back Christian Chivu and forward David Suazo. Milan is what it always is, a world-class side that will have a full season with Ronaldo up front. Roma has put together a side capable both of playing the country's prettiest football, and of making a sustained run at the title, picking up a half-dozen players in the transfer market to flank Totti. And Juve is, well, Juve.

But it goes beyond the possibility that this could be a season for the ages; it's safe to say that a season for the ages is needed if Serie A is to continued being mentioned in the same breath as its peers to the east.

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