Well now, looks like new tests have excluded a severe injury, so Marchisio might actually recover in time. Huh...

Inter 1-1 Parma



Even better since Andi Lila scored for Parma.

Who's he?

Albanian national.

Oh. That makes it clear.

Yeah. And it was a nice goal, too.

Fiorentina 0-3 Juve
Napoli 0-1 Lazio

Well now, who would have thought. Juve-Lazio final.

I didn't even notice Lazio going second.

And totally on merit. Roma just haven't lasted the course at all. 2 wins in their last 9.

From the league being Juve - GAP - Roma - GAP - THE REST earlier this season it's now Juve - GAP - Lazio and Roma - GAP - THE REST.

Sad days when the establishment of Serie A (Juve/Milan/Inter - Roma/Lazio/Fio - the rest) just isn't the case any more.

Up to those who have fallen away to resurrect themselves.

Nah, I don't think that's the case, Lazio have a moderately decent squad. But they're hardly anywhere near close to Roma in talent

They're just on an amazing run of form while Roma have simply slumped under the pressure just because they were even labelled as contenders (never were in my books but that's how the press labelled them). They're just chokers, simple as that the moment they came even close to putting Juve under some pressure they crumbled and haven't been able to recover since

Yeah because Sampdoria have a better squad than Milan too!

Doesn't matter who's got more talent, or the better squad - all that matters is results and form.

And on that level Lazio are deservedly second.

Better results and form do not mean a better squad? Isn't that quite obvious?

I was talking about your assessment of Juve gap, Roma & Lazio gap, others

When we talked about this it was always about the squad, as in the talent and quality in those squads compared to others.

And imo, Lazio are still Fiorentina level and below us, Inter and Napoli when you're looking at squads.

As I said, they're on an amazing run, which could just as easily stop as suddenly as it began. Form is temporary and all that. They've just managed to hit their peak at the exact right time in the season .i.e while Roma are in a dreadful slump and the others are all inconsistently faltering

Got to the stage of the season where the cream has to rise. We're in 8th. Lazio are second.

That tells its own story. We can whine about mismanagement and B&G all we want (believe me, I've been having a lengthy debate with BT Sports' James Horncastle on Twitter about this over the past 24 hours) but ultimately results are the currency in football.

I remember X saying Atletico were one season wonders. That they couldn't do it this season like they did last. And yet plainly they are.

But no one will convince anyone they have a better squad than either Barca or Real.

So yes, form is temporary, but the right team and management can punch above its weight regardless and achieve more than the sum of its parts.

How are Atletico doing it again? Being 3rd and reaching the quarters isn't quite a replay?

Well they sure as hell can't be in the CL final yet can they!

And as for La Liga, sure, they're not exactly top of the table but they're only 9 points off it and that's having lost their star striker and goalkeeper, not to mention fullback.

Are you seriously telling me you think they're in no way close to the level they were at last season?

Despite, for example, being yet to lose to Real at ALL this season?

I don't think you can compare Lazio to Atletico at all imo

I'm sorry but I don't think the current Serie A table reflects the quality of the teams, AT ALL. For me it only reflects the dismal quality currently in the league

Lazio as I said before are simply going through a purple patch, they have a decent coach who's doing well to get the best out of his players. You really think they'll be second next season?

Atletico, have some really good players, and even though they do not have a squad comparable to that of Barca and Real Simeone is the type of coach that can get absolutely everything out of his team, even if it isn't so great, last season was great, but they're not repeating themselves in the league this season, simply because no matter how much of a great team Simeone constructed, the quality of Barca and Real simply eclipses theirs and in the end it's going to become evident as it has done this season following the loss of top class players Atletico had to go through. Because in the end, great form and sheer determination can only carry you for so long, you need the top names to sometimes carry you through or pull you out of a sticky situation. Which is what Costa did for them

I think the fact that as opposed to having someone like Simeone, or a crafty guy like Pioli we have an inexperienced Pippo says it all

I don't speak in general terms. X-O said Atletico is a one-season wonder, meaning they won't be able to win or maintain winning silverware. Surely, no one can predict the future. But IMO Atletico are on Dortmund corse: after a season of won Championships and a season marked by the CL final, they now slowly die off.

Again, Atletico have been good this season. No argument here.


Let's be honest here, shall we. You can call Pioli a "crafty guy" now, but he's been nothing but a shot in the dark, just like Inzaghi. This one turned good, the other one not so.

Honestly, I don't expect Atletico to repeat last season's course. Third place in the league and making it to the QF in the CL when their Round of 16 opponent was Leverkusen (which they barely managed to beat on penalties) is not impressive. However, if they do somehow manage to beat Real, then consider me impressed.



Only difference is that Pioli has experience whilst Inzaghi is a noob.

This, at least Pioli has been around the block once or twice with other Serie A sides, Inzaghi had barely made it around the block once with the Primavera before getting this job.

And let's face it, Pippo was as wiley and crafty as they come as a player, but he clearly didn't carry over that trait into his coaching methods as he's as naiive as one can get

So, two italian teams in Europa League's semifinals, one of them in Champions League semi-finals.

Italy's outscoring Germany in UEFA points for the first time in ages

Like I said EL is what matters most, Germany outperformed Italy in the CL, while it's the opposite case in the EL

Allegri has been doing spectacularly well. He learned from mistakes done at Milan. He is well on course to lift another Scudetto and participate in a CL blockbuster. Hope they got through.

Yes, I agree that he seems to have learned from his past mistakes, which were A LOT!

I don't think that's what it is

I think he was smart enough to not mess up a good thing, which Juve already were under Conte.

If Juve have to suddenly lose their 2 best players, I think we'll start to see the Allegrisms once again. I think that when he has his back to the wall he simply has no answer in terms of how to turn things around. And that's what I hated most about him. It's all fine and dandy when things are all going well but when things take a turn his decision making is a bit of a travesty

FFS. You're consistent, I'll give you that.

As soon as I saw it was han that posted I thought "I already know exactly what han thinks about this" haha

Well I did say he was smart in the second sentence...

You rejected my use of you as (second choice) BFF. No

Let's give credit to where credit's due. Allegri hasn't exactly invented the wheel at Juve, and he did inherit a well-oiled machine, but even at Milan when he had a very competitive team he used to make amateurish mistakes. His overall attitude and way of thinking used to irk me. I remember when we lost 3-0 to Arsenal, after the game he told the team that it wasn't the end of the world and the important thing was that we were through. Ibrahimovic was about to beat him up. Zambrotta's words.

I now see him as more refined in that sense. I've read many post-match interviews, and he's always very demanding of his players, even when they win. And he doesn't seem to mess up with line-ups and formations as much anymore.

No, I don't think he's a good coach, and at any other team that displays weaknesses he would fail spectacularly, but at least he's learned (or he's trying to) from past mistakes, and that should be acknowledged.

I think people often forget his age in this discussion. He's only 47. Theoretically he has another decade or two of potential managing ahead of him. With a resume that now includes Milan and Juventus with scudetti and at minimum a CL semi final appearance to his name he is pretty much guaranteed to have managing options for the foreseeable future. Who knows, maybe he can learn from the past five years and become something much better than he was with us.

Ah the show that launched Katy Holmes, Michelle Williams, even Joshua Jackson. Everyone except the van Der Beek fucker who was meant to be the main dude.

I personally think he's too limited as a tactician for that.

I don't see ingenuity and ground breaking stuff when I see Juve play nowadays. That is what I saw with Conte when he took over there though. His first season with them was just really eye opening.

Like I said, he was very smart not to mess with a very good thing.

My issue with him is that he's very limited and we saw this very clearly with us when he lost his star players. Atm his situation at Juve is similar to the one he had while at Milan while everything was still rosy.

My point has always been that he's a decent enough coach to be able to keep Conte's Juve on the right track, but if that core were to be hit then we'll see if his time at Milan was a fluke or if he's as good as Danny and kurt would have us think he is

How many managers are actually groundbreaking tacticians though? Would even Mourinho be considered groundbreaking? Mourinho in my opinion seems to be more an amazing motivator and very adept at when to use already existing tactics. I'm not sure Conte was really all that groundbreaking either. It's not as if the 3-5-2 he used had never been implemented before. He is another excellent motivator that got his players to totally commit to the tactics he wanted. Does a manager need to be a groundbreaking tactician to be considered great?

I think Conte is a great tactician just as much as he's a great motivator

And I agree, that some managers have more of one of those traits than the other.

Carlo for example is for me a great tactician but not really a great motivator.

Capello was both.

With Allegri he's average at both. He didn't get his players to buy into him when he did not have the best team in the league anymore and he wasn't able to motivate them to play beyond their capabilities which is what Conte, Mourinho and Simeone for example are masters at

Allegri lost a league title which he was leading for more than 3/4 of the season. All it took was one 4-0 loss to Barça and his players crumbled mentally. Not to mention his choices of playing Muntari ahead of Aquilani or Emanuelson as AM. Man, I really wish we had won that scudetto!

Now I really just wish we could win...a game!

Comparing Pippo's incompetency to his doesn't really strengthen ones' argument...

You mean like being without Pogba and Pirlo at the important end of the season? As for "not messing with a good thing", he has changed formation an awful lot. Conte just put ou the same team with the same system, Allegri's done things with a more tactical approach to his opposition and improved upon whatever Conte did.

Last I checked Pirlo is there, I think Marchisio and Vidal are more important than Pirlo anyway imo.

As for changing formations, that's irrelevant. a formation is not the most important thing and when I see Juve play now to last year I don't see any major eye opening differences. They still play in the same ruthless manner they did under Conte.

Anyway, it's pointless to talk about it because we'll never agree, but should Juve lose some of their important players this summer I would like to revisit this convo

Oh and losing a player to injury for a month or 2 is different to selling them. It's a big moral shock for the entire team when you lose someone like Ibra and Thiago for example, it's a completely different scenario than losing them for a few matches to injury (especially when the league has been won months ago)

Well, gee Han, of course if he's going to lose, say, Pogba and Tevez and have them replaced by mediocre players the team will be weakened and that's going to make Allegri's life harder. You're not making any huge revelation here.

But we didn't lose only Silva and Ibra. We also lost Nesta, Van Bommel, Seedorf and, even though they were merely ex-players at that point, Zambrotta, Gattuso and Inzaghi who represented the last of Milan's old senators. It was a huge shakedown, and we didn't replace these players with adequate substitutes. Not to mention Pato always being out injured.

Allegri managed to get us 3rd. Some would say it was an over-accomplishment, others would say it was the legitimate position we could achieve that season. I'm with the second, but still, he did get his job right at the end of the day, regardless of how (luck, referees, poor opposition etc.).

That's the point though isn't it. That he's okay to an extent (he still did lose that Scudetto) as long as he has the strongest team but he simply doesn't have the tactical know how or the motivational factor to get that extra something from his players.

And no, we didn't just lose 2 players, but aside from Nesta and VB, the others all played peripheral parts in the season prior. Ibra was the true loss imo, the amount of games we won through his sheer brilliance alone is something that we can't even account for. Our biggest tactical system while Ibra was with us was to hit the ball long at him and see what he does.

If Juve were to lose say Tevez and Pogba, how would Allegri cope with that, because he obviously didn't know how to cope when he lost Ibra.

I wasn't. You're that obsessed with attacking Allegri you won't even see an unrelated argument as anything other than support of him!

I'm just saying we've gone from winning Scudettos & UCL's under Carlo and Allegri to being lucky if we can draw a match in the league.

It's not like we were doing great one season, Pippo came in and this is the outcome.

We've been going downhill for a while now and Allegri's last season, even the one before that was dire to say the least.

My point is both are/were bad, I don't think trying to justify one by highlighting the incompetency of the other changes that

Again, I wasn't talking about Allegri. I wasn't highlighting Pippo's incompetency against the merits of anyone else. All I said was 'now I just wish we could win a game'.

The fact that you once again drivel on about Allegri and won't shut up about him shows you seem borderline obsessed with going on about him!

I'm only talking about Pippo! PIPPO! PPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

In reply to x-off's post about Allegri losing us a Scudetto....

Okay, let's talk about Pippo... what's there to say about him? Imo he's not a coach, simple as that really I don't think it's his calling tbh. He has shown zero potential of even being a good one in the distant future

We agree on that. He'd be a good youth coach, you know, LIKE HE BLOODY WAS!

I always whined he shouldn't be taken out of Primavera as he was doing a good job.

That's his level - nurturing young players. In senior management he's utterly incapable.

What makes him a good youth coach? A few good results doesn't mean much. He was there only a year, so nurturing young talents isn't exactly on him.

I think it's easier to have young kids looks up to you than pro players simply based on your name and reputation.