After Wednesday’s dramatic draw in The Santiago Bernabeu, Juventus booked their place in The Champions League final against Barcelona. It will be their first appearance in the final since 2003, when they lost 3-2 on penalties to AC Milan. Perhaps more importantly from Juve’s point of view, it’s their first final since they were engulfed in the “Calciopoli” match fixing scandal in 2006. The scandal and subsequent investigation led to the club being stripped of the Serie A titles they’d won the two previous seasons, as well as being relegated to Serie B for the first time in the club’s history. Since that point just nine years ago Juve have made a remarkable recovery, which, almost regardless of the result, will be crowned on 6th June in Berlin.
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When the original verdict (one that was appealed, altered and was even retrospectively dismissed earlier this year) of the investigation into match fixing was announced on 14th July 2006, it sent shockwaves through Juventus and Italian football as a whole. It immediately sent many key players packing, with Lilian Thuram, Ibrahimovic and Fabio Cannavaro being among the host of world class players (many of whom featured in the final in 2003) to leave the club rather than gut it out for at a season and potentially more away from top flight football. However, the club started to rebuild through the players it convinced to stay, including Pavel Nedved, Alessandro Del Piero and (crucially as it turns out) Gianluigi Buffon. The relegation also let them integrate younger player who wouldn’t otherwise have had an opportunity to break into the first team, which allowed Claudio Marchisio and Giorgio Chiellini among others breaking into the team for the first time.
It was on the back of this mix between hungry, talented youngsters and a handful of more recognised players that chose to stay that Juventus earned promotion back to Serie A at the first attempt, winning the Serie B title despite a 9 point deduction as part of the Calciopoli punishment. The next four seasons (2007-11) were a muddle of modest success and unfulfilled expectation which saw the club fail to qualify for the Champions League twice and work their way through four different managers, all of whom failed to recapture the success and consistency Juve had enjoyed before their relegation.
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If there is one time period that can be pinpointed as the crucial turning point that led Juventus to their current final berth, it would be the summer 2011. Having appointed club legend and fan favourite Antontio Conte (who came off the bench in the 2003 final) as their new coach at the end of the 2010/11 season, sporting director Giuseppe Marotta then went out and secured the services of Stephan Lichtsteiner from Lazio and Andrea Pirlo from AC Milan on the first day on the summer transfer window. Merely 20 days later he completed the signing of Arturo Vidal from Bayer Leverkusen; the trio were signed for a combined £20m with Pirlo costing absolutely nothing after being released by AC Milan.
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Of course, while Lichtsteiner has provided consistency and energy in both attack and defence for Juve since the moment he first pulled on the shirt, no two players have had a bigger impact on Juve’s success since 2011 than Pirlo and Vidal. Their games are naturally complimentary, with Pirlo’s metronomic passing and supernatural awareness dovetailing with Vidal’s hyper-aggressive, all-action defending and constant movement off the ball in attack. They have, along with a solid back 3/4/5 (depending on the manager and what game you look at) and Buffon provided the backbone that has allowed this team to win the last four Serie A titles (or Scudettos), setting numerous records along the way. With the spine in place after the 2011 summer window, Juve have since done an excellent job adding more flair in match winners like Paul Pogba in 2012, Carlos Tevez in 2013 and Alvaro Morata last summer.
Coming into the season though, the one thing that had eluded the Old Lady (as the club is affectionately known) was success on the European stage. Frankly, that seemed unlikely to change. While Juve came into the season with the same experienced spine that had guided them to three straight Scudettos, it was now an aging one, as evidenced by the fact that six of the players that started on Wednesday were 30 or over. In addition, Antonio Conte had left the club in the summer in acrimonious circumstances after falling out with the board. The vacancy was filled by Max Allegri, an appointment that was met with scepticism by the media and outright negativity by many fans after Allegri’s uneven four season stint at rivals AC Milan (where, in his first season, he had marginalised Pirlo, another fact that counted against him in the eyes of the fans).
However, thus far Allegri has been a huge success, helping Juve to evolve into a more potent attacking force while maintaining their defensive solidity. Domestically they have enjoyed their now typical levels of dominance, but it is in Europe where this evolution has been most noticeable. Having finished second in the group stages, Juventus got lucky with their Last 16 draw, getting Borussia Dortmund who they swiftly dispatched 5-1 on aggregate, showing off their newfound attacking prowess and cutting edge. The quarter-finals and semi-finals have been tighter affairs, with just one goal the difference over both ties, setting up a final with the most threatening team in Europe this season, with maybe the best front three ever assembled (alarming for Juventus that really isn’t hyperbole) in Barcelona.
While much has changed both tactically and personnel wise at Juventus since 2006, one thing that has remained constant is their ability to manipulate the transfer market, targeting specific player who for whatever reason (age in Pirlo’s case, lack of exposure for Vidal or immaturity with Pogba just to name a few examples) were undervalued at the time and getting them at what retrospectively look to be ludicrously cheap deal. It has allowed them to build an elite team that is both individually talented and collectively solid. They will still be significant underdogs against a Barcelona team that has torn apart more talented teams this season on the back of their lethal attacking lineup. Despite that, they may have enough to complete what is already one of the great redemption stories in recent football history.