ALBERTO'S WEEKLY COLUMN - WEEK 16

"Never a dull moment", the phrase I often use when talking about Juventus has never been more relevant than this week. This week gave a similar feeling to that of 2006. Gut check time for some, are you in or are you out? Love lost or the bond forged even stronger between you and the club you support?

Juve had gone into a big matchup against Atalanta and was unable to get a point out of it falling in a 1-0 loss. The second half in this one left Juventus surrendering much of the play to Atalanta and they took advantage of Juve's struggles finding the winner in the 87' through a Milnovsky shot which deflected off an unlucky Alex Sandro. To make matters worse one of our best players this season Chiesa had to leave this one with a hamstring injury, leaving Juventini hoping he wouldn't miss too much time as the chase for a top 4 position continues. With the analysis of the match barely being reported and the sting of defeat very much lingering...it happened. Out of nowhere, The Super League is announced! Let the madness begin.

Juventus at the forefront alongside 11 other clubs which were going to start this alternative to the Champions League. The information coming in about the details of this league was weak at best. The majority of fans felt this would kill football as these teams would always be locked into this league. While I personally at the start did not like this idea, the more I thought about it the more I did start to like the idea of this league. My biggest concern was that these clubs remain in their domestic leagues and that remains the same. As an alternative to the Champions League, I liked it as if I'm being quite honest there are a lot of teams and matches in the Champions League I simply don't care about. So, why not weed those matches out? Why not want my club to start to gain much more money and cut out the middle man ( a very corrupt one at that )? Also, the Cinderella runs of certain small clubs that some fans were using as an example as to why this league would be a bad idea are very few and far between and nothing would stop these runs from happening in domestic leagues and there would be open spots in this Super League to be filled which could be rewarded but the main thing for me was it was a starting point. It didn't need to be the final product it just needed to be the start of something that could be better for our club's financial situation especially. UEFA immediately felt the heat, stating players who took part would not be eligible to represent their national sides, that these teams would not be able to play in their domestic leagues. These 12 clubs had UEFA where they wanted them, with the organization even announcing their format changes for 2024 which were very similar to that of the Super League. The clubs were being painted as the bad guys in this one, lead by greed. Being involved in business and at one point with a major corporation, cutting out the middle man for the clubs made sense and I was more annoyed with UEFA letting it get to this point since for one, they don't have a product without these clubs and the clubs are the ones with all the overhead. I thought they should've worked with the clubs better so it wouldn't get to this point. it also left me with the thought that possibly the Super League was all a ploy to get what they wanted out of UEFA. Then the English sides all dropped out or were paid handsomely to do so. Regardless, it was a move that would no doubt halt the project. At the end of the day, Juve and Real Madrid and the clubs from Milan and Barca were all that remained strong. I had warned fans celebrating this be careful what you wish for because I saw this just giving an already corrupt organization an even bigger ego and even more power. The words that followed daily by Ceferin confirmed these fears I had. He actually sounded like a dictator and I was very impressed with Danilo speaking out against the UEFA lead man's words on telling players they could not represent their countries in tournaments if they play in the Super League as well as stating the obvious if 12 teams agreed they thought changes should be made and we must not lose sight of that. With the massive shockwaves this sent through the sporting world we would have to reset and focus on the pitch as we had a midweek match against Parma upcoming.