Juventus Face Involution
MILAN, February 28 - Confusion, silly mistakes, revolutionary but nevertheless unexplainable ideas concerning the starting line-up, inconvincible performance during the latest matches, no creativeness, problems with fitness: these are only some of the problems that can characterize yesterday's Champions League show of Juventus against Spanish side Deportivo La Coruna.
On the eve Marcello Lippi confirmed he expected a very stifling pressure from Deportivo�s side. Lippi was right in his pre-match predictions but the thing is that his guys failed to oppose their opponents pressure especially in the center. Why that occurred so is one of the most important questions that currently disturb Juve�s supporters.
Another problem is why Lippi decided to rest Thuram, Conte, Zambrotta and Davids. Perhaps, Lippi wanted to field fresh players, but the idea turned out to be a complete disaster. The performance of Birindelli, Maresca and Tacchinardi was a failure as they didn�t manage to show even half of their capabilities.
Only thanks to Buffon Juventus ended the first half 1-0; it is evident that if the goalkeeper is the best player of his team, something is broken in the Juve�s mechanism.
Lippi tried to refresh his team�s play making substitutions in the beginning of the second half but even Conte, Davids and later Zalayeta failed to produce something really valuable to prevent their opponents from dominating over them. Besides, the Dutch midfielder has been sent-off and after that Italians had nearly no chances to level the score.
So, the doubts that Italian media expressed concerning Juventus's fitness were completely confirmed at Riazor yesterday. Currently Juventus face a difficult task, as they have to win last two matches and hope their main opponents will slip in order to qualify for the quarterfinals.
But that won't be easy to put into practice as Juliano and Davids will miss the next game against Bayer Leverkusen in Germany, besides Paolo Montero�s participation is still doubtful.
