Search: ' Alessandro del Piero'

The investigation took six years, but Juventus’s doctor has just been convicted of doping players. Matt Barker wonders if the 1990s record books will be rewritten

Having cake-walked qualification for the knockout stages of the Champions League and with the side sitting comfortably in pole position in Serie A, this is shaping up to be a vintage season for Juventus, under new coach Fabio Capello. But the findings and verdict of a recent anti-doping inquest threaten to taint the club’s image. The investigation was prompted by the comments of Zdenek Zeman, a former Roma, Lazio and Napoli coach, now at Lecce. In a 1998 magazine interview, the Czech declared it was “time for Italian football to come out of the pharmacy”, pointing the finger at Juve in particular and talking of a process that had “started with [Gianluca] Vialli and has arrived finally with [Alessandro] Del Piero”.

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Dave Hannigan tells the story of the Irishman who's been around the world and back

Just four summers have passed since the then Juventus manager Carlo Ancelotti introduced Ronnie O’Brien for the last 13 minutes of an Intertoto Cup semi-final against the Russian representatives Rostelmash. Making his third cameo appearance in the competition, the 20-year-old Irishman slotted in comfortably along­side Edgar Davids, Alessandro Del Piero et al. A matter of months after Bryan Robson had shown him the door at the Riverside Sta­dium, while very publicly dismissing his chances of ever making it at the highest level, he was pulling that famous zebra-striped jer­sey over his head and trousering £3,000 a week. Life was good and the unfortunate Liam Brady com­parisons were far too plentiful.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Gabriele Marcotti looking at Darko Kovacevic

If he hadn’t been run out of town after making just eight starts for Sheffield Wednesday, perhaps Darko Kovacevic might have earned himself a funky nick­name in Yorkshire. Certainly, English fans tend to be a little more imaginative than their Spanish coun­ter­parts (“Golacevic”was the best Real Sociedad sup­porters could come up with). Perhaps he might have entered Sheffield lore as the “Darko Destroyer” – after all, he was Nigel Benn’s contemporary.

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Massed ranks of WSC writers and interviewees reflect on the best and worst of 2000

Jim Rosenthal
Ups
– Premier League highlights acquired by ITV
– Cardiff losing at Gillingham to ensure Oxford United avoid relegation
– Playing for the Cookham Dean Parents against 12-year-old son Tom (lost 8-7)

Downs
– Hearing the country I had backed to win Euro 2000 (Italy) had lost in the final in extra time. They were still leading with two minutes to go when I boarded a flight home after the French grand prix.
– Oxford United’s owner Firoz Kassam telling the fans after the Luton game to “piss off” unless they gave him their support. The club’s “saviour” is taking us into the fast lane out of the League.
– Sitting in the stadiums of Florence, Rome and Turin and hearing the racist abuse directed at black players of Manchester United, Arsenal and England

Hope for 2001
– It stops raining and English clubs go all the way in the Champions League.

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Criticism of Italy's tactics is not likely to change the way they play, says Roberto Gotta

Car horns stayed silent on Sunday night, July 2. How ironic it has been to see one of the dullest, most defensive national teams of all time come within a minute of winning a tournament they had entered without much hope. Whenever Italy enter a tournament with low expectations, they fare much better than when they are expected to do well. It happened in Argentina 78 and, memorably, in Spain 82, when the Italy camp was torn by controversies and the team was barely seen as capable of progressing to the second round (which they did, just), then went on to win it.

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