'SuperPippo' Inzaghi Hopes to Repeat Last Year's Semifinal Performance
Copyright � 1999 Nando Media
Copyright � 1999 Agence France-Presse
By TREVOR HUGGINS
MILAN (April 5, 1999 8:00 p.m. EDT http://www.sportserver.com) - Gary Lineker may once have been his hero, but Filippo Inzaghi will show no mercy on English football when the Juventus ace faces Manchester United at Old Trafford on Wednesday.
Inzaghi, dubbed "SuperPippo" by the adoring Delle Alpi stadium crowd, scored the only goal when United last played Juventus on a wintry night in Turin, back in December 1997.
Now the tall, lanky poacher is just itching to repeat that feat in this week's European Champions League semifinal, first leg tie.
United may have the bookies and the home crowd on their side, but it would be suicidal for Alex Ferguson's men to leave Inzaghi unshackled in the penalty area.
Inzaghi is hopeless at dribbling, a dead loss at shooting from long distance, and sensibly doesn't attempt either. His heading ability, though passable, as United have already discovered to their cost, is limited.
But where he is unmatched in Italian football, like Lineker in the English game, is a remarkable ability to be in the right place at the right time. Many, if not the majority, of Inzaghi's goals are scored from inside the six-yard box.
He is superb at shielding the ball with his back to goal, before turning his defender with lightning speed, and has a knack of arriving at the right moment with an outstretched boot as the pass comes over from French playmaker Zinedine Zidane or winger Angelo Di Livio.
His party piece, though, is to break away from the off-side trap.
"It's true, my presence keeps the linesmen extremely busy for the whole 90 minutes," he admitted. "But that's the way I play.
"I'm always at the very edge of the off-side line waiting for a defender to make a mistake, to lose me for a split-second or stay one step behind his teammates and keep me on-side.
"For me, the important thing is not to get demoralised. I might be caught off-side 10 times in a match. But in the end, something almost always goes my way. The thing is to wait for it and believe it will happen."
It's a rare skill, though shared by younger brother Simone at Piacenza, and has taken him from relative obscurity to the top of Italian football.
"SuperPippo" was the Serie A's top scorer in 1996-97 with 24 goals for Atalanta and after joining Juventus bagged another 27 in all competitions last season - including a Champions League hat-trick away to Dynamo Kiev.
This season has been much more of a struggle.
The loss of Alessandro Del Piero through injury in November robbed Juventus of their best player and sent them plummeting from top slot to mid-table, culminating in the resignation of coach Marcello Lippi.
Del Piero's absence and the ensuing results were a hammer blow to team morale as a whole, but Inzaghi also lost the strike partner who had created many of his goals.
Sadly for United, though, "SuperPippo" has come through the hard times, which included several weeks of injury, and is back to his best.
Saturday's suprise defeat to Empoli was Juventus' first since Carlo Ancelotti replaced Lippi in February, while Inzaghi scored in both Italy's Euro 2000 qualifiers last week, including one against great Dane and United 'keeper Peter Schmeichel, and found the back of the net in two of Juventus' three Serie A games before that.
And with the semifinals coming up, Ancelotti has already been joking about United's scant chances of stopping Inzaghi.
"I've told him that if he can't score against the English, I won't look him in the face again," quipped the coach.
Jokes aside, the statistics are clearly pointing the Italians' way.
Juventus and United have clashed four times in different European competitions, but the Turin club have always gone on to reach the final - winning the UEFA Cup in 1977, the Cup Winners Cup in 1984 and losing the European Cup to Borussia Dortmund in 1997 and Real Madrid in 1998.
And Inzaghi is determined to keep that record unblemished.
