These two words seem to be forever in twined. Juve are a club that has been working hard the last few years to try and get rid of this tag, but somehow it seems to find them. The latest outrage from the British media came following their 3-0 victory against Celtic in the Champions League and Stephen Lichtsteiner’s unorthodox style of marking.
People have complaints over the contact he had with the opposing player but has anyone stopped to think how the Celtic player was trying to get the better of Gianluigi Buffon? I’m pretty sure that’s cheating. All Stephen was doing was trying to protect his keeper, like Marchisio had said in a previous interview, they studied Celtic, and they knew this was the way they would get ahead like they did against Barcelona. In that game one Celtic player would stay by the keeper, ready to knock down the ball for Samaras to knock in.
Initially the Swiss was just holding his ground and keeping some space between him and the keeper, there was no foul! And also this was all going on before the ball was kicked and the Celtic player was not near the ball, co there was no obstruction on Lichtsteiner’s part. Although by the end I would have liked to see a little more subtlety on the part of the Swiss international.
All of this has be blown way out of proportion, (in no small part to Sky Sports) it has somewhat overshadowed the game. What I find enraging was how everyone conveniently forget that the home side spent much of the first half kicking Andrea Pirlo!! So what, they can dish it out but they can’t take it. And not only that, but they have to tarnish the entire game over a few incidents. I thought English players were meant to be “ real men” and the Europeans were a bunch of wimps who were always seen complaining at press conferences?
What people should really be questioning is the small fact that they couldn’t score throughout the game, yes, they had most off the possession but in what areas? Also they had more shots on goal, but they were never really good enough to trouble Buffon. Juve knew that Celtic had to score, so they were quite happy to let them have the ball, and then once they had tired themselves out running like headless chickens, Juventus made their move.
In the end it was brain over brawn and they can’t accept it!
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