At about 10.30 on Sunday night, the curtain finally came down on one of the most successful soccer acts of recent seasons. Juventus coach Marcello Lippi stormed into the press room at Turin's Stadio delle Alpi, minutes after the reigning Italian champions had been humiliated in a 4-2 home loss to Parma, to announce his resignation. Lippi's words were few but to the point.
"I have decided to resign. If I am the problem, if the problem is linked to my December announcement about my future, then I'll say good day to you and leave."
This has indeed been a nightmare season for the "Old Lady" of Turin, the most successful Italian club side of the post-war era and one which in the last four seasons under Lippi has picked up three Italian league titles, one European Cup, one Intercontinental Cup and one Italian Cup. At the beginning of this season, many would have ranked Juventus as still among the best club sides in the world. By Sunday night, even the Juventus faithful had to admit that the current side could hardly win an argument.
The defeat to Parma was the sixth Juventus league loss this season and culminates a miserable Serie A run which has seen the club win only two out of 13 games since early November. Sunday night's emphatic loss leaves Juventus in ninth place in the league, 15 points off leaders Fiorentina and 10 points away from a Champions League qualifying berth. Furthermore, last month Juventus were also eliminated from the Italian Cup by Bologna.
Such miserable Serie A form has been paralleled in the Champions League where Juventus struggled into the quarter-finals after an unimpressive autumn which saw them pick up five draws and only one win from one of the easier qualifying groups.
Perhaps, after four highly successful seasons, Juventus have merely lost their hunger and motivation. Perhaps, too, their fall from grace began as far back as last summer during the World Cup finals in France. The host country's triumph at France '98 inevitably left two key Juventus players, Frenchmen Zinedine Zidane and Didier Deschamps, physically and emotionally drained. It has come as no surprise that both men have been less than their best this season, with Deschamps looking burned out and Zidane distracted, as evidenced by Lippi's decision to occasionally drop them. Last July was important, too, because that was when Lippi decided he would leave Juventus at the end of this season and move on in search of a new challenge, perhaps with Inter Milan next season. Lippi told the Juventus inner circle of his intentions but, inevitably, his decision was soon the worst kept secret in Italian soccer. By December, he had little option but to publicly confirm the media speculation and admit his pending, end-of-season departure.
In other circumstances, Lippi's anticipated announcement might not have mattered a fig. However, the season begun badly for Juventus even before a ball was kicked when they were caught up in the doping allegations of AS Roma coach Zdenek Zeman. Things got worse with the left knee injury suffered by star striker Alessandro del Piero in a November Serie A game against Udinese. That injury proved more serious than initially anticipated, ruling del Piero out for the rest of the season. This has not been a happy Juventus season on the transfer front, with new purchases such as Yugoslav Zoran Mirkovic, Frenchman Jocelyn Blanchard, Croat Igor Tudor and, last month, Frenchman Thierry Henry and Argentine Juan Esnaider all falling short of the Juventus standard.
Defeats by Roma, Bologna, Lazio, Fiorentina and even Cagliari last week did not help. In and around the Juventus camp, important people started to mutter. Despite Lippi's protestations that everything was still to play for and that his side might well still end the season with a trophy (the European Cup?), fingers began to point in his direction.
On the day last month that Juventus drew 1-1 to bottom-of-the-table Venezia, honorary president Umberto Agnelli wondered if Lippi would "make it through right to the end". Lippi is no fool. He sniffed the wind and drew his own conclusions.
Where, however, do Juventus go from here? Ex-Parma coach Carlo Ancelotti had already been appointed for next season, and yesterday he agreed to take over immediately. However, like many others, Ancelotti knows only too well that Lippi is not "the problem".
Del Piero's injury, transfer mistakes, lack of motivation and sheer ill-luck are much more part of "the problem". It remains to be seen if the new man can salvage anything from the wreckage in time for a hardly impossible Champions League quarter-final tie against Greek side Olympiakos next month. Juventus are clearly down, but are they entirely out?
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