The moment when Juve stopped leading

More than the crisis of results itself, which Christmas of the you darker is the difficulty to understand what happens within oneself. The image that speaks of this discomfort is that of the darkened face of Nedved who leaves the field after a contrast in the area between Bernardeschi and Dragowski, judged regular by referee La Penna. Being denied a sanction, perhaps plausible, is difficult to accept for those not used to being harmed by arbitration in Italy. But the vice president’s anger contains perhaps a broader unease. Juve is beginning to realize that they are no longer the sun of a heliocentric system, not only because most planets have understood that rotating around it for ten years would imply imploding the entire soccer galaxy. But because the light from which he shines is darkened by the clouds that he himself has produced, giving up on renewing himself.

There is a turning point in this resignation, and it is located in the annus horribilis of the pandemic, between the hiring and firing of Maurizio. Often, the most original and innovative coach of the Italian championship. His arrival after the luster of the inesthetic hegemony of Cheerful It suggests the will of power to question itself, to have the thousand props on which its castle of championships rests, to compete openly with the quality of the game that makes football the most beautiful, whatever the cost. Sarri could have been the coach capable of changing Juve. The opposite happened: with the ninth scudetto in their pocket, Juve put Sarri at the door, after realizing that it was impossible to change it. In the middle of this tug of war are the two replacements of Ronaldo, champion freed from the locker room rules, cross and delight from an addiction that gives and takes away.

From his hermitage in Castelfranco di Sopra, Sarri now watches how the immutable Juve slides on an inclined plane ten points from the top of the table. But that does not solve even one of its contradictions, because it has given up understanding the law that regulates the perseverance of any success beyond its natural time, and that requires freedom from power to preserve it. Juve, on the other hand, maintains its strong power. First of all in the market. Where you play in advance, buy, options, promise, adjust, to the point of taking risks – as in the case Suarez – Cross the threshold of what is lawful. Not out of a vocation to violate the rules, far from it. But because of the difficulty of recognizing the limit between desire and reality. Except then realizing that, paying more than any other team can afford, there are many “normal” players in the bag, not all well matched, enough to suggest to the new coach, Andrea Pirlo, role adaptations not always successful and sensational resignation. Like the one who leaves on the bench Dybala, preferring Bernardeschi and Kulusevski. The Argentine is another of those variables that struggle to find space in the rigid black and white architecture. He’s too brilliant for a team that already has one genius and can’t afford another. The relationship between Juve and Dybala fully narrates the management impasse in which a club has entered that begins to feel victory as a condemnation. Agnelli points out that his playmaker demands the salary of the five best players in the world, although he still does not deserve it. But it does not offer you a concrete opportunity to become one. Not only because he plays little, but because he is not central in the schemes of a team that tends to accentuate rather than reduce his dependence on Ronaldo.

The incredulous face of Dybala, framed by the collar of the feathered suit, is the irritated of Nedved that disappears in the tunnel: the first does not understand why he does not play while Viola is rampant, the second does not understand what is changing around Juve. Because it is difficult for him to ask himself what has not changed within Juve.