Apart from noticing that the title of this topic seems deadwrong (as it's CERTAINLY not designed for Juve fans)
, I have a few comments:
If you wanted to watch spectacular football all the time you wouldn't be supporting an Italian team. Some clubs have their minds set to be entertaining always, no matter the consequences. You would look for Barca, Real M. the top Dutch sides etc. etc.
The Italian teams may in most ways be the best, have the best players and everything, but they do not play the most attractive football.
I'm not going to go out on the limp to defend Juve here, as this year was one of the least impressive performances I've ever seen from them from a style point of view. I won't accept however that an impression is being made of Juve being the most boring side in the world. AMO's Cattenaccio theories seem's a bit strange as Juventus were the team which had the most shots at goal last season of any serie A team. You can look it up if you doubt me. Our problem was that D.P couldn't score to save his life, Inzaghi missed LOADS of big chances as well, and our reserves rarely got the chance to do better. I'm not saying it was spectacular because it wasn't but we created a lot of chances and ought to have won much more convincingly on many occasions.
Had we scored on a higher percentage of our chances we still wouldn't have played spectacular, but few people would have noticed.
Which brings me on to Lazio.......
I mean come on! You won Lo scudetto, had a great season throughout and ended up with the second highest goal tally if I remember correctly. But you rarely played champagne football either. If you like the concept of Miha pin-pointing a player with a 50 metre pass that's fine, but apart from when Veron or Nedved took the reigns and played great matches Lazio didn't look impressive either. Don't get me wrong- I thought you looked like a good, competent, hard to beat side, but it's not like you re-invented football or anything, as it would seem when you look at some of the posts from Lazio fans in this topic.
The only team that impressed me playing wise from time to time was Roma, but they obviously crumbled when playing the big teams apart from the first derby. I don't remember any super convincing performances from Lazio in the CL apart from the demolition of Marseille and honestly- they were 5th from bottom in their league at the time, had numerous injuries and nothing to play for + the (granted
) great match where Chelsea was totally dominated at Stamford Bridge.
There were no Barca-Chelsea, Barca-Viola, Valencia-Barca, Real-Bayern (2-4), Man.U-Valencia or Man.U-Real.M performances from Lazio as I remember it.
Johan Cruijff said after the first round of the CL that Lazio looked like the best team because they never lost even when they played awfull and that was true in a number of matches. Note that I'm not saying you weren't playing more entertaining football than Juve, but get of your high horses.
I'm not writing this to get back at you because of all the Juve hints, but simply because I don't think the Italian football is the most enjoyable from an art point of view. I love it for it's intensity, passion, the rivalries and ofcourse because Juve is MY team.
Therefore- to answer Mattias question- I would always pick winning ugly before losing beutifully when dealing with my favourite team. If I'm neutral I'm not watching football unless there's a chance to see spectacular play or it's matches of big importance.
I don't believe anyone who prefers losing in fashion to winning ugly. Not if the team has a shot at winning anything that is.
Ciao.
[Edited by Glen on 05-07-2000 at 02:07]
