What if: Pele had joined Juventus in the '60s?

Pele and Sivori in 1961

If you asked people (old enough to remember of course) to describe Italian football in the 1960s, you will most likely get the same responses; ‘Catenaccio’,‘Helenio Herrera’ and ‘Nereo Rocco’. The 1960s belonged to the Milanese giants, on the domestic and European front; between them they won five Scudettos (including numerous runners up finishes), four European Cups and one Cup Winners Cup. It was the decade of La Grande Inter and Gianni Rivera.

Compare this to the fortunes of Juventus in the decade and it’s quite a stark contrast. Juve won back-to-back titles in 1959/60 and 60/61, a further title in 1966/67 and a sole Coppa Italia title in 1964/65. By La Vecchia Signora’s high standards it wasn’t the most successful of decades, but the entire landscape of Calcio could have been very different if a particular mission by the club had been successful.

The mission in question was a potential transfer that could have changed the face of Italian football in the '60s, over the years Juve have had numerous 'nearly done' transfers (Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Figo and Xabi Alonso spring to mind), yet this 'nearly completed' transfer is by far the biggest of them all, and it is a relatively unknown story.  

The Asian Market : Premier League 1 - 0 Serie A

Beep beep, beep, beep, a familiar yet always unwelcome noise wakens me from a deep sleep, it's 3:40am on a Monday morning and the noise is my alarm clock. Why am I getting up at this ungodly hour you may ask? To watch my beloved Juventus of course, tonight’s opponents are Genoa at the Marassi.

I make my way out of the bedroom as quietly as possible and sit myself down on the sofa, still untangling the cobwebs from my head as I switch on the TV and find the channel showing the game.

The encounter itself was one worthy of curing a person with severe insomnia, that was until Andrea Pirlo stepped up in the 89th minute and curled a trademark free kick into the top corner, which caused me to run around the living room, silently screaming like a deranged lunatic at around 5.25am.

Usually only one outcome

USA '94 - The last great World Cup?

Several months ago I shared a few tweets with Tim Vickery, the BBC’s South American football expert, he was of the opinion that the 1986 World Cup was the last ‘great’ World Cup. I replied, insisting that while USA ’94 didn’t have a team that won over the hearts of the public like the ‘Danish Dynamite’ side, the overall competition was equally as good as Mexico ’86.

However is that really the case? The World Cup of 1994 was the event that opened my eyes to the world of Football and therefore has always been held on a pretty high pedestal. 

The event captivated me, from the colourful (not to mention some outlandish) jerseys to the eternal sunshine to the exotic names of countries I’d never heard of to the quality of the players on show, it was here that I found my footballing idol in Roberto Baggio, I cried for hours when he missed his penalty in the final.

Five reasons why Juventus should take the Europa League seriously

A very bleak night for Juventini

Having been knocked out of the Champions League group stage for the second time in four years,  La Vecchia Signora find themselves relegated to UEFA’s much maligned 2^nd tier competition once again. In the 2009/10 edition, Juve beat Ajax in the round of 32, and then we all know what happened next.  Fulham unceremoniously dumped them out of the tournament in the last 16 after an embarrassing second leg in which they were 1 – 4 up on aggregate and somehow contrived to lose 5-4 after a stunning comeback from the southwest London side.  The side of 2009/10 was not a particularly vintage Juventus side and so expectations were not high on winning the tournament, this time however it’s quite different.

My Favourite Goal

Whether you have been a lifelong fan of the beautiful game or have just recently developed an interest in the sport, everyone will have a favourite goal, a goal they will reminisce and reference whenever a conversation about Football crops up. A goal, which from the moment you witness it, will be forever etched in your memory.  The goal could be your most cherished for emotional reasons, it could save your team from relegation on the last day of the season, or win your side a cup or league title, it could be a goal that just blows your mind for the sheer technique and skill involved, or it could be from your favourite player.  The strike that is my number one belongs in the latter two categories.

Thanks to the glorious invention that is the Internet, I know the date of the very first game I watched on television that started my obsession with the beautiful game.  It was the 10^th July 1994, I was seven years old, and my late father was watching the Quarter-final match between Sweden and Romania at the 1994 World Cup, at the time I was aware that the World Cup was taking place as a friend of mine had a USA ’94 football with all the groups on it and we used to go through all the exotic sounding countries like Mexico, Cameroon and Bolivia.