There aren’t too many Villarreal fans welcoming the purported move of Guiseppe Rossi to Juventus after the Barca flirtation ended, but for the sake of Juventus I really do hope this comes through. Surprising for someone who really enjoyed Rossi’s renaissance at Madrigal last year, more surprising for a Roma fan to care what happens to Juve. Little less surprising when you see the 12yr old (and quite obviously so..) Juve wallet the Roma fan still carries. I neither hate nor love Juve (very few clubs can boast of that, given my neatly polarized football brain), I simply follow them year after year with academic interest. Juve’s 2010-11 season was seen as dismal by most people, but I quite liked the return to Italian fundamentals w.r.t squad and style.
Though Serie A in general has been based on home grown talent, I’ve always considered Juve to be the Valencia/Barca of Italy for the number of national players it supplies, but before the Calciopoli, Juve was suddenly carrying a record number of non-Italians in the starting XI (almost all of whom promptly left after the demotion of course). This brings me to why I like their dismal-ity last few years, return of dominantly Italian lineups, crisp recovery from defense to midfield, and an easy calm on the ball that I’m ashamed to say Roma seems to be losing these days... Evidence enough that Melo, Sissoko, and Grygera were quite easily their worst players last season – all non-Italians (I’ll conveniently leave out how Krasic, another import, was most likely their best player of the season...convenient and also because I disagree and think the Marchisio – Pepe pairing did most of the work). Add the newly acquired Pirlo (don’t tell me you didn’t know about that..) to this pair and, fingers crossed they actually start together, they’ve suddenly got a hugely dynamic midfield trio extremely comfortable on the ball (you have no idea how much restraint it took me to not insert a few digression lines about how awesome Pirlo was, is, and always will be. Stupid Milan I hope the San Siro collapses during the derby and buries both the teams...except Nesta and Zanetti...).
Rossi didn’t make it to the 2010 WC squad, but there’s not much doubt he’s a mainstay in the Azzuri now. Sure Villarreal isn’t jeopardizing his national carreer, Prandelli isn’t the ‘Serie-A based players only’ that Lippi always was, but maybe he should be... it makes sense. Over the years, the flux of nationalities in club sides has obviously been on the rise, but paradoxically the fortunes of the national sides seem increasingly tied in with the better sides of their respective leagues. A lot of this seems quite duh but think about it, 30 years ago Yugoslavia’s and Czechoslovakias and Elbonias were running riot on the national scene but never had a club make a dent in the UCL (erstwhile European Cup). Contrast that with the Germany 80-90 domination and corresponding Bayern, Leverkusen, Hamburg at club level, and more recently – Spain and Italy sandwiching WC victory with UCL victories.
2010 WC Winners – Spain
2009 UCL Winners – Barcelona, 2011 UCL Winners – Barcelona
2006 WC Winners – Italy
2005 UCL Runners up – Milan, 2007 UCL Winners – Milan
I’m not saying given a choice, coaches should choose players from the local league, neither am I saying there’s a divine equation that can help us predict WC performance based on the UCL. I’m not even saying Rossi needs to join Juventus for tactical reasons of utilitarianism principles or that this post had anything poignant and insightful to justify you reading so far. All I’m saying is... someone please get me a new wallet, it's so old the “VEN” has faded out and now it just says “JUTUS” ...and no way am I ‘academically interested’ enough to carry around a rag bitten JUTUS wallet!!
P.s I’m quite glad he didn’t join Barca though, like the initial rumors suggested : guaranteed end of national career! Poor Maxi Lopez... he's even cut off his cute ponytail now :(
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