Rory Smith, the soccer correspondent for The New York Times, discusses Mad Max and the problems at Juve in his email to subscribers today. I don't think I can post the whole thing, but here are the key paragraphs. It is precisely in those moments of struggle, though, when a philosophy — however convenient, elusive and ethereal the idea might be — is of most use to a manager. Having a clear vision of what a team might come to be helps players, executives and fans alike find glimmering shards of hope even in a picture suffused with gloom. It is a way of infusing the performance, rather than merely the result, with meaning. It offers a framework to judge a team on its progress, not just its product. Allegri, though, has none of that. He is, and always has been, entirely dependent on the vicissitudes of the scoreboard and the league table. No philosophy is legitimate, in his eyes, other than the pursuit of victory. In that, he could not hope for a more perfect place of employment than Juventus, an institution that is just as short of broader vision and deeper purpose. There is precious little evidence of a long-term strategy at Juventus, no sense that this is a club that knows where it wants to go and how it wants to get there. Allegri’s return, in and of itself, provided ample illustration of the lack of imagination, the failure of creativity, among the club’s static and satisfied hierarchy. He had succeeded before — winning five straight Serie A titles and reaching two Champions League finals — and, though the club had fired him in pursuit of something more exciting, something more lasting, it turned to him again when that future did not immediately actualize. Juventus did not, it turned out, know what else to do. The recruitment strategy is the same. Juventus has posted a loss in each of the last five seasons, and no Italian club has ever lost more money than Juventus did last year. That, in part, convinced the team’s hierarchy that it could not afford to renew Dybala’s contract, for example. And yet its response has not been to invest in youth, to try to kick-start a new cycle, to find a coach with a clear style and a defined approach to build a team around. Instead, it threw money at Pogba, 29, and Dí María, 34, hoping that they might provide instant relief. No wonder that when de Ligt left the club for Bayern Munich this summer, he announced that he had done so because he wanted to play for a team that was trying to win the Champions League. That is, of course, precisely how Juventus sees itself: as the equal of the continent’s true giants, a club that should be competing for not only domestic titles but international ones, too. Increasingly, though, those days feel as if they are in the past. Through complacency and neglect, the club has been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair, condemned to complain about a world that has left it behind, a prematurely old man shouting at the clouds.
Unfortunately, that is what Juventus has become. A club without a proper strategy or vision, on or off the pitch. The only long term thing this club is vying for is super league project, which is another failure.
Agnelli's letter to shareholders https://www.juventus.com/en/news/articles/president-agnelli-s-letter-to-shareholders
The whole section on the future of Euro soccer is correct. Something must be done to wrest control from UEFA and give it to the clubs.
I Nuovi Bianconeri e Nerazzurri! Serie A: Udinese and Atalanta are thinking big by Terry Daley , Oct 7, 2022
The Swiss Ramble who covers financial aspects of Euro football teams has a good thread on Juventus. As expected it is a pretty bleak report but with the end of Covid restrictions, match day income should rebound. Still the club is far from profitable. #Juventus 2021/22 accounts cover a season when they finished 4th in Serie A, won the Coppa Italia, but were eliminated in the Champions League last 16. The club noted that finances were “once again significantly penalised” by COVID. Some thoughts in the following thread.— Swiss Ramble (@SwissRamble) October 17, 2022
For once Coblli-Gigli is right about something. If anything Inter was more involved than we were: https://football-italia.net/cobolli-gigli-inter-equally-as-guilty-as-juventus-in-calciopoli/
Nope. It destroyed our team. deprived us of 2 legit additional Scudetti, made Inter into a fake champ, and the League is still paying the price of that fraudulent "investigation".
let me know when something is done about it. Oh what's that, nothing will ever be done about it, well shit. Waste of time to keep hanging on to that.
Troppi infortuni, la #Juve indaga: nessun intoccabile, provvedimenti durante la sosta https://t.co/vOFFgl32ED— calciomercato.com (@cmdotcom) November 4, 2022 Only a decade late lol, about ********ing time the club did something about all these injuries.
I'm not even sure this is actually related to Juve, but it is about one our greatest legends. I just watched the Netflix documentary about FIFA's corruption, and let's just say that it's a very bad look for Michel Platini. Obviously Havelange and Blatter (amongst others) are the pantomime villains, but Le Roi made a deal with the devil when he supported Blatter for FIFA president. It may have insured him the presidency of UEFA, but he's tarnished his image and reputation, perhaps irrevocably. You can't be that close to the rot and not at least have knowledge of it. And corruption within FIFA was/is so prevalent and so endemic, it's impossible to believe that he wasn't involved to some degree, even if tangentially. EDIT: And Joao Havelange is by far and away the worst single thing that has ever happened to football.
There's rampant corruption in all of the confederations, but CAF, AFC, and CONCACAF are the worst by far because their countries are the poorest and therefore their leagues are the weakest. Kickbacks are the point and purpose of their existence.
It is interesting to me that the "take" at least of the first episode (only one I have seen so far) is that FIFA was fine as long as a Brit was running it but as soon as a non-Euro took over it became "corrupt". And then they implied if only the Swede had won in 1998 all would be well with the world! LOL. AdiDas wasn't going anywhere and the dosh was rolling in fast and furious and there was and still isn't much accountability. Maybe the Euros would hide the payoffs better but I find it hard to believe that FIFA would have been crystal clean and transparent under ANY regime. UEFA is the same. Look at how corrupt they are now and the mafia tactics they used to kill the Super League. Why? Because the trans-Euro comps are their cash cows, that's why.
Also, I read elsewhere that when Clinton showed up expecting the US to win 2022 and it went to "Cutter" he felt humiliated and sicced Obama and Loretta Lynch on FIFA! If true once again this just goes to prove you never cross a Clinton and get away with it. The FIFA criminal enterprise got "trumped" by another one more powerful than it is.
The fact that it was mostly British was incidental. The nature of it was a tightly-knit coterie, a 'good ol' boys' network. It just so happened to be British (because, to be fair, the game did evolve in England). If it had evolved in Spain, it would have been mostly Spanish and it still would have been nearly impenetrable to outsiders. That Havelange was a non-European is also incidental. He was an outsider who wanted to be an insider, and he happened to be Brazilian. It's what he did to become an insider that is the problem. There's a myriad of problems that come with a 'good ol' boys' network. Was there cronyism? Of course there was. Was it exclusionary? Yup. But you know what? It didn't pretend to be other than what it was. Roos's accommodation and acceptance of Apartheid South Africa was morally reprehensible, but it was honest. He genuinely believed in the Empire and the idea of 'Britishness' and sport that it propagated (and propagandized). Ideas that were deservedly extinct by the time Havelange bought the presidency of FIFA. And that's the difference: a (comparatively) honest bigot or an amoral crook. It has nothing to do with European or non-European (because lest we forget, Sepp Blatter is Swiss). Is anybody really so naive as to believe that Havelange gave two damns about South African oppression? He opposed apartheid because it got him votes from the African congregants. If supporting apartheid would have gotten him those votes, he would have supported apartheid. Self-enrichment was the be-all and the end-all. Of course there was cronyism before Havelange's presidency, but cronyism is different from outright corruption, if only by a degree. But it's a degree that matters, and it matters a lot. The cronyism that preceded Havelange's era was the kind that ensured only people who held the title 'Sir' sat on the FIFA board. The corruption that followed Havelange's era is the kind that awards the World Cup to Qatar. Cronyism is self-selecting from the members of the same club. Corruption is parading a dying 95 year-old across the Caribbean because that's what Jack Warner wanted. Both are bad, but one is worse. If Adidas had thought that could have monopolized the marketing rights to the World Cup before Havelange's presidency, they would have formed ISL long before he even considered running. There was a reason it was founded in 1982 and not before. Sepp Blatter didn't emerge in a vacuum: Havelange created the template and set the precedent. Would Lennart Johansson have eradicated corruption within FIFA? Of course not. But if he had become FIFA president, there's a very good chance that the 2022 World Cup would not be being held in Qatar. And for the approximately 4,000 slave laborers who have died in the desert building the infrastructure for a sports tournament that should never have been held there, it could have been the difference between life and death.
AAAnnnnnnnddddd....of course RAMSEY plays all 115 minutes today for Wales against the USA. Just as we all predicted.