Troubled times for Turin teams

There are two major footballing hotbeds in Italy, located fairly close to each other in the north west of the country but while one city is flying, the other is in crisis.

In Milan Inter are top of the league and bidding for a fifth straight Serie A title with AC emerging as their closest, and perhaps only serious title challengers.

Both are through to the Champions League knock-out stages and face mouth-watering clashes in February against Manchester United and Chelsea.

But just 130km down the road, Turin is in turmoil.

Juventus are the most decorated club in Italian football having won 27 scudetto crowns and twice lifted Europe’s premier trophy.

They are a team with a rich history that has boasted some of the sport’s greats such as Gaetano Scirea, Michel Platini, Paolo Rossi, Michael Laudrup, Roberto Baggio, Zinedine Zidane and Alessandro Del Piero.

They have also been coached by two of Italy’s best ever in Giovanni Trapattoni and Marcello Lippi.

And while for most teams sitting third in Serie A at the halfway stage would be considered a fine achievement, for Juve it is all part of their current crisis.

It’s not just that ‘The Old Lady of Turin’ are third, they are 12 points behind Inter, have just been humiliated 3-0 at home by AC Milan and last month crashed out of the Champions League group stages following successive defeats to Bordeaux (2-0) and at home to Bayern Munich (4-1).

They have lost six of their last eight matches in all competitions and as well as those last three defeats were beaten 2-1 at home by Catania, who at the time were propping up Serie A.

What’s more, Juve have often been lucky this season, not least when goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon made a string of excellent saves to earn them a fortunate 2-0 win over lowly Livorno, the most shot-shy team in the league.

Buffon has been Juve’s second best player this season, closely behind centre-back Giorgio Chiellini, which says it all about the team’s forward line.

Expensive Brazilian summer recruits Felipe Melo and Diego have been largely disappointing and Felipe Melo is only in the team because of injury problems to fellow defensive midfielders Mohamed Sissoko and Christian Poulsen.

Diego, the creative catalyst supposed to fire Juve to the title, started brightly but has since lost his way in a team that struggles to get forward, let alone threaten their opponents’ goal.

And now that top scorer David Trezeguet and Buffon are both injured, they look impotent up front and vulnerable at the back.

And that despite ususally boasting four of Italy’s back five.

The return of Fabio Cannavaro has been far from a success as time seems to have finally caught up with the former World Player of the Year, who was nowhere to be seen on any of Milan’s three goals on Sunday.

And then there is rookie coach Ciro Ferrara whose tactical selections continually come under question as he seems unsure of what system to play to best accomodate the players he has.

His days in the Juve hotseat look increasingly numbered.

And he won’t have been helped by the jeers his team received during Sunday’s game or the clashes between fans and police outside the ground.

But while Juve are in trouble by their own usually high standards, their problems pale into insignificance compared to Torino’s.

The club who dominated Italian football in the 1940s, winning five straight titles until a plane crash wiped out almost their entire team, are in serious freefall.

Unlike Manchester United, who suffered a similar fate a decade later, Torino have never recovered from that tragedy and have lived in Juve’s shadow ever since.

But this season has been particularly traumatic following last season’s relegation to Serie B.

Torino are the epitome of the instability that dogs many Italian teams and have just made their ninth coaching change in the last four years and four months.

Stefano Colantuono has replaced Mario Beretta, who lasted only five matches having taken over from Colantuono, who began the season in the hot-seat.

Of those nine coaching changes, Colantuono is not alone in having been recalled as Walter Novellino was given two stints and Gianni De Biasi three.

Colantuono is the 20th change over the last decade and the team who sat sixth and in a Serie B play-off place when he was fired, have dropped to 11th and four points out of the play-off picture.

But according to the ousted Beretta, Torino’s biggest problems aren’t even on the field, with La Gazzetta dello Sport describing him as more pyschologist and fireman than coach during his beleaguered 33 days in charge.

“The truth is that here, it’s not the coaches who are the problem,” said Beretta.