In July 2018, an earthquake 7 was recorded in northern Italy on the scale, some would say CR7, with the well-publicized transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid to Juventus. Andrea Pirlo, The legend of the old lady, was one of the first to welcome the grandiose move, when he expressed enthusiasm for the new match and told the Italian media: “Ronaldo brings added value to Juventus. When you buy a player at this level, it does not guarantee a Champions League win, but it can certainly bring you closer.” .
It is highly doubtful that the gifted past midfielder imagined in his mind that it would be only two years before he could coach the Portuguese at the Allianz Stadium in Turin. And here, after another half year, the two depend on each other’s success, with the great Yuba going up for the rematch against Porto, with her back to the wall and 2: 1 behind from the first game in the quarterfinals. Pirlo has admittedly not been the coach in the last two years, when Yuba has twice fallen into a pit for a loss in the first game. In his debut year, Ronaldo was the savior with a hat-trick against Atletico Madrid, but last year his leg was too short to save and the Italian champions were relegated to the disciplined Lyon of Rudy Garcia.
Another failure in the quarterfinals against a clear underdog is unthinkable, in a club that engraved on its banner the value of “victory is not the main thing, but the only thing.” Things get even more valid when, recalling that Yuba is 10 points behind Inter, the Italian leader, and closer than ever to losing the Scudetto, after nine consecutive championships that are a European record in the top five leagues. That is, if in recent years Yuva has drawn the confidence and strengths from the local league, then this time – unlike any season in the last decade – she will have to draw them from other sources and with more effort to save the season.
Ronaldo is fully aware of what Pirlo said about him two and a half years ago. The Champions League’s top scorer and all – time record winner wants to write another masterpiece in his rich encyclopedia and become the second player in history to lift the trophy with big ears with three different teams, an achievement reserved only for Clarence Seedorf. But this obsession will be very difficult for him to conquer and as the weeks and days pass in Turin, the challenge only becomes much more complex. If only because Juventus have not touched the European crown for 25 years.
It’s not that Ronaldo is not doing the job for which he landed as a rock star in the Anieli family’s empire. It’s still a serial scorer who can bounce to All-Star heights in the NBA and punch the net from every possible angle. The phenomenon has scored 21 league goals in its debut season and 31 last year, which have spawned two Italian championships. The season has stabilized at 20 in 22 games, a wonderful supply for the 36-year-old. On the way he also became the greatest conqueror of all time and overtook the Czech Josef Bikan (at least according to some sites) with seven hundred and who counted a few goals. The problem is that during the rounds and games, especially during the inflated and cruel corona season, the dependence on it only sharpens.
If in the debut season in 2018/19, Cristiano was responsible for less than 29 percent of his team’s goals in the league, then in the next season and a half he accounts for about 40 percent of all conquests in Turin. Albero Murata, Ronaldo’s best partner, only started last week to return to the season-opening ability after an injury and post-Corona syndrome from which he suffered. Paolo Dybala has not played since the knee injury against Sassuolo on January 10 and although he will not need surgery, no Juventus-certified official has a green idea when he will return to play. Yuva is stuck with only two strikers in the money time of the season, which drew criticism from the management who did not bother to bring any more reinforcements in January.
It is interesting to note that Ronaldo is responsible for 20 conquests in the league, but none of them were scored as a winning goal – surprising given that he is the big winner of the modern game. This figure perhaps symbolizes the problems of Yuba and Pirlo who have the most difficulty in cracking Serie A games in which it is a little more difficult for them and only once did they achieve victory by a difference of one goal. The rest of the games ended in bigger wins. None of them were 0-1, as they once said of Yuva, who she loves so much. A detail that perhaps testifies more than anything to the character or if you will the DNA of the club that was replaced as early as the end of last season under Maurizio Sari.
It is not surprising that in the loss to Porto, which resulted from two critical and naive mistakes in the opening of each of the halves, Yuba recorded its youngest squad in a knockout match in the Champions League since the final against Real Madrid in 1998. The injuries of the older duo Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini have naturally lowered the average to 27 years and 122 days, but that is of course only part of the story. Ronaldo is surrounded by a bunch of talented players, however inexperienced, such as Weston McKenny, Federico Keiza and Diane Kolosevsky, who arrived at the beginning of the season and are starting to rejuvenate the old lady’s base.
Aside from age, there is also the matter of exercise. Pirlo, who came to the coaching chair in Yuba quite casually a week after being appointed U23 coach, is a big believer in moving a ball through the brakes and playing pressure all over the pitch. It is not always closed on the right lineup for the team that takes quite a few risks and often also pays for it. Antonio CassanoThe former striker claims that the connection between Ronaldo and Pirlo can not bear fruit: “Ronaldo does not fit in with Pirlo’s philosophy. He will continue to score goals in the yeshiva as well. But he is not connected to the pressure game the coach wants to instill. He came to take the Champions League. Yuva won “In Scudetto even without him. He just landed in the wrong project.”
To Pirlo’s fairness it should be noted that his late appointment hampered the team’s preparations for the season and as a coach in his first year overtime in Zoom is not enough to study the whole coaching theory. It is clear that it is difficult to get satisfactory results when the number of injured and sick is increasing (last month reached a peak, with 6-7 car players disabled for various reasons) and the staff is dwindling at a frustrating timing. But in a club like Juventus, which collects titles for breakfast, these things can sound like an excuse in kindergarten. Ronaldo ends contract in 2022, he does not have much time to fulfill himself at Juventus. And the big dream, it seems, is just moving away from it, day by day. The question is whether another elimination in the quarterfinals will also lead him to recalculate a route?
