A Friendly, Coppa Italia, and Mats Hummels!

To give playing time for the non-starters, Juve had a friendly and played Lecco, a Second Division of Lega Pro team from Lombardia, with Andrea Agnelli, Beppe Marotta and Pavel Nedved watching from the sidelines.

Conte fielded a 4-3-3 formation: Storari; Motta, Sorensen, Grosso, De Ceglie; Marrone, Pazienza, Giaccherini; Del Piero, Toni, Quagliarella.
Quagliarella was particularly inspired in the 1st half. For the 2nd half, Estigarribia, Lanini (primavera), Krasic, Iaquinta and Elia subbed in for Pazienza, Giaccherini, Del Piero, Toni and Quagliarella.
Krasic had a good showing in the 2nd half and helped create the 6th goal. Elia also did well.
In the end, it finished 7-1 for us. Goals: 4′, 44′ Toni, 18′ Giaccherini, 30′ Marrone, 48′ Motta, 75′ Iaquinta, 78′ Frasca (Lecco), 88′ Lanini.
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Coppa Italia
We will play Bologna in our 1st Coppa Italia match this season. As a seeded team, we’ve directly qualified into the round of 16, along with seven other seeded team: Roma, Lazio, Milan, Palermo, Udinese, Merda, Napoli.

This one-legged match will be played in our Juventus Stadium in December 2011 or January 2012. Lega will advise the exact date at a later date.
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Mercato
This week, Beppe Marotta clearly said that we’re not gonna purchase any high profile players. He did, however, mention that he and his team would keep their eyes open and pounced on opportunities arisen. Couple this with an official Board of Director’s approval on a loss on this past quarters, around 20mil, we can deduce that we don’t have any money to spend this winter.

Work that phone, Beppe! And make sure you got the right SIM card!

The press picked up Marotta’s comments and their creativity exploded: Tevez keeps being a b*tch and asking for a transfer for not being a starter and Montolivo will out of contract in the summer. They immediately thought these as “opportunities” mentioned by Beppe.
Bah.
Tevez cost MCFC £47 million (poundsterling!) and his contract runs until 2014. MCFC are not stupid and he will cost at least around 20 million, if not in the region of 30s. Montolivo indeed will be quite cheap but it’s understood he’s already had a verbal commitment with Milan. Besides, with our trio MVP (Marchisio-Vidal-Pirlo) starting, I doubt he’ll happily join us to warm the bench.
I’m pretty sure getting rid of the deadwood will be a priority:

• Amauri (Tottenham, England, or a club in Italy: maybe Parma?)
• Marco Motta has fans in Stuttgart (remember Molinaro?) and recently, Fulham.
• Fabio Grosso, though, has no suitors and will earn his free money until the end of his contract this summer.
• One of Toni/Iaquinta will probably leave. Toni is more likely since he’s out of contract in the summer and Iaquinta is a glass man.

Amauri, Motta and Grosso combined for 6.5mil in nett salary, which means it cost the club 13mil, including tax.
So if we managed to get rid of them, who’s coming?
Manuel Pasqual
The 29-yo LB from Fiorentina is clearly not a household name but one of his characteristic suits us well: he’s 5th in number of completed passes per game among the fullbacks in Serie A. He needs to improve his accuracy but no doubt he’s a passer, and will be very valuable to sub or occasionally start at LB for us this season. At 29, a chance of winning should be more of a priority than starting every Serie A game.
(I’d still love Caceres much more but with no money, he’s more likely to arrive in the summer).
Furthermore, he’s in his final year of his contract and if Fiorentina and his agent cannot come to terms, any clubs can have him for a meager sum of money. Marotta must be drooling over this opportunity.
Mats Hummels
Now this name is a high profile one. Arsenal and Merda also follow him closely but somehow most media mentioned that we’re leading the race. With Krasic and Elia struggling, maybe they reckoned that Dortmund would be more willing to let go the 23-yo CB, valued at 13-15mil, if a quality counterpart is included.
(Maybe they also reckoned that Merda’s players were either over-the-hill veterans or wet-behind-the-ears deluded kids (*cough* ricky alvarez *cough*) and Hummels wouldn’t favor a move to the currently 7th-place EPL team, so they concluded that we’re leading).
Anyway, Paratici was present at Arsenal-Dortmund game last night so it further fueled the rumor. And the Dortmund’s likely elimination from the CL also wouldn’t hurt.
But one thing is pretty clear. We don’t have any money so we have to sell before we buy. So let’s hope great luck for the agents of Amauri, Marco Motta, Fabio Grosso, Luca Toni to find their client brand new homes.
Forza Juve!!
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“I didn’t choose Juve. Juve chose me.” @dwicarta is just an ordinary guy who happens to bleed black-and-white since Roby Baggio wreaked havoc in 1990 World Cup in Italy. When time permits, he’d like to spend it on hoops and one of his passions: writing. One day he stumbled into juventus.theoffside.com and now here he is: doing his passion on his passion.