The quality of Juventus had been tested in Serie A in the last seven seasons. Juventus, which had been hit by the Calciopoli scandal and plunged into Serie B, has returned to being a big team that is respected by its opponents. All the best achievements have been achieved by the Old Lady.
Juventus as the main character of Italian football has one important thing that other Serie A contestants currently do not have which is the winning mentality.
For Juventus, the winning mentality cannot be defined only as it is. The mental of a champion was felt for anyone who had been the part of Juventus. The mental champion was actually transmitted by the Agnelli family, the owner of Juventus, and passed down to each player, coach, coaching staff, even supporters in each season. Such a mental champion is a real thing for Juventus.
Although they had not been able to present brilliant achievements in Europe, at least Juventus were the team that dominated Serie A for seven consecutive seasons and they were assumed to be the only Italian representatives to appear most consistently in the blue continent competition. With a magnificent transfer this season, Juventus was predicted to dominate European competition. Ronaldo became one of the world’s best players who was considered as the guarantee for Juventus to get the award they had been dreaming of. It’s a shame if they only expected the eighth scudetto in a row from this Portuguese man’s arrival.
Juventus success stories showed that it was the best Serie A club. The quality of its players, the most league awards its players got, and its perfect regeneration clearly reflected that Juventus was indeed the king of Pizza.
However, Juventus had not become a ‘good man’ in the Serie A drama for good. They had also been noted as a team that embarrassed Italian football until they got badly labeled in the eyes of the world. The tragedy was known as the Calciopoli scandal.
The Calciopoli scandal is a bad memory for Italian football. This match-fixing scandal had claimed the lives of three big Italian clubs in the 2005/2006 season. Right on July 14, 2006, Juventus, Fiorentina, Lazio, AC Milan and Reggina who became the suspects of this case were sentenced by the FIGC (Italian Football Federation). Although there were several other teams involved, many people considered that Juventus was the main character of this shameful scandal.
The central figure in this Calciopoli scandal was Luciano Moggi, who at the time served as General Manager of Juventus. So, it was no wonder if the public prosecutor asked Juve to be punished so severely that he was even sent to Serie C1 and got a points deduction. However, thanks to a lengthy appeal process, the punishment was not as heavy as what was proposed by the public prosecutor. It was reported that the penalty received by Juventus at that time was Relegation to Serie B, getting a point reduction of nine points, not entitled to take part in the 2006/2007 European Champions League, stripped of the 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 Serie A awards, and the General Manager, Luciano Moggi, was banned from the world of football.
Those punishments had a big effect for clubs in Italy, especially for Juventus who had to feel the first degradation during their participation in Serie A.
Besides going down to Serie B, the most unforgettable punishment was the scudetto switch from Inter Milan. The title of 2005/2006 Serie A was submitted to Inter Milan who was in the third position. This was because AC Milan, which was in second-ranked, was also hit by the scandal.
Italian clubs experienced a setback after being hit by the Calciopoli case. Various problems began to hit the Italian Serie A which made the achievements of Italian clubs dimmed in European competition. The Italian Serie A must even be shifted by the German Bundesliga and Spanish La Liga in the UEFA competition ranking.
Even though not only Juventus which was involved in the dirty business, still, the whole Old Lady was labeled a “sore” of Italian football.
But in the end, those all were just an old tale that coloring the history of Italian football. The crisis that occurred in 2006 did not make Juventus slump. It even now managed to rise and become the best club in Italy.
Now, the Italian League is stretching again yet Juventus actually become the actor of the rise of Serie A itself. Slowly but surely, the Bianconeri again took over the track for the highest caste champion in Italy. Big names were successfully released by the old lady. And now, Juventus are trying to prove themselves that they deserve the European Champions League title.
