Serie A’s midweek fixtures saw two startling results this week, two major teams – Juventus and Napoli – held to draws by two newly-promoted clubs, Frosinone and Carpi. It was a clear reminder both of the unpredictability of elite football and the competitiveness of Serie A, but also two simultaneous exemplars of one of the more underrated skills of the game: the art of frustrating stronger opposition.
“La palla è rotonda.” The ball is round. A simple expression, usually offered with a shrug of the shoulders somewhere in a bar on match day, after the final whistle has blown and the supporters find themselves staring in horror at the score. Half of its meaning comes from the fatalistic tone it’s always spoken in, but in effect – “Football. Anything can happen, what are you gonna do?”
Juventus got off to a slow start on Wednesday evening at their home ground. The stadium was only about half full and manager Max Allegri opted for a highly rotated squad, already looking ahead to Juve’s crucial away match against Napoli on Saturday. The team looked energetic but disorganized, eleven men with their own ideas about how the game should be played, eager to show off their own skills but clumsy at stringing their ideas together into a coherent scheme. They completely dominated provincial Frosinone in all statistics – ball possession, passes completed, shots on goal – but were unable to convert any of that possession into a goal. The first half finished scoreless. Shortly after the second half kicked off striker Simone Zaza found an opening and fired home his first Juventus goal, but the rest of the half was marked by the same disorganized, ineffective play. By the end of regulation time Juve had clocked 537 passes completed and 39 shots (only 7 of which were on target) and had been unable to break down Frosinone’s cynical and tenacious defense. Then in the 92nd – that mythical period known as “Zona Cesarini” after Renato Cesarini, the Juventus striker who terrorized opponents in the 1930s with his tendency to score decisive goals in the dying seconds of a game – Juve’s defense suddenly lost cohesion, Frosinone’s Leonardo Blanchard saw his moment and….the final whistle blew on a stunning 1-1 result and Frosinone’s first-ever point in Serie A, conquered at the formerly impenetrable fortress of Turin.
Napoli found themselves in a similar predicament as they traveled to Carpi. The Partenopei had found their form in impressive fashion over the past week, demolishing first Club Brugge and then Lazio by matching 5-0 scorelines. Confidence was high going into the match against the newly-promoted minnows, but it soon became apparent that things were not going according to plan. Maurizio Sarri’s 4-3-3 formation dominated possession and passing, but for all their control of the ball, the team could not find a way onto the scoresheet. Insigne, Mertens and Higuain fired blanks for the entire first half, and the substitution on of Gabbiadini and Callejon in the second half did nothing to improve the situation. Similarly to the Juventus game, the statistics show an utter domination of one team by the other – in Napoli’s case fully 72% of possession, 617 passes completed and 22 shots – but an inability to break down a much smaller team’s defense. This match finished scoreless. What’s going on?
Any game of football has two main elements: the technical-tactical and the mental. It’s hard to say with any universal certainty which element is the more important – a team struggling to find their confidence in a bad patch of form can pull out a crucial win thanks to a painstakingly organized tactical scheme, and a disorganized band of misfits can win a match on sheer audacious self-belief and a few bold pot-shots. In general, of course, both are necessary. And what seems to have happened to Juventus and Napoli this week is a deficit of both elements.
Juventus have had a very poor start to the season. The four-time defending champions currently sit 13th in the table, having taken five points from five games and only keeping one clean sheet. Napoli have had more ups and downs, a difficult start but then a tremendous announcement of intent in the form of two 5-0 wins, then this setback against Carpi, and are just one place above Juventus in 12th.
Both teams underwent major changes during the summer transfer window: Juventus revolutionized their squad, and Napoli changed their coach. At Juve, the departure of not only first-team regulars Andrea Pirlo, Carlos Tevez and Arturo Vidal but also locker-room stalwarts Marco Storari and Simone Pepe has significantly changed the atmosphere at the club. Manager Allegri and the remaining players from past seasons have all frequently spoken of a “year of transition”, the necessity of allowing the young arrivals such as Paulo Dybala, Mario Lemina and Stefano Sturaro to adapt and gel into a new, fresh Juve. So far though, that coherence has been clearly lacking – and some fans are beginning to get restless, looking nervously at Allegri’s history and questioning whether he truly has the ability to build a team from the psychological standpoint.
Napoli’s situation, the squad more or less the same from last year, with a few useful additions, is both similar and different. The hiring of Maurizio Sarri, whose tactical precision impressed the entire league last year at Empoli, has been a drastic change in terms of match day tactics and week-long training methods. It is arguably easier, though, for an already-constructed team to adapt to a new coach’s methods than for a coach to rebuild a team full of new, inexperienced arrivals. Both teams, regardless, looked disorganized and clumsy on Wednesday evening as they were stunned by their small opponents.
But for all the ink spilled about the weaknesses of Juventus and Napoli – what about the strengths of Frosinone and Carpi? When a matchup is as lopsided on paper as the two we just saw, it’s often assumed to be a case of the big team “throwing away an opportunity” or “failing to win”, never is much credit given to the David that embarrassed Goliath. And this is somewhat of an injustice.
It’s a lost art among the top teams, who rarely have to worry about facing a drastically stronger adversary than themselves. Juventus will always have that time they draw Bayern Munich or Barcelona, Napoli will find themselves facing Sevilla or Dortmund, but they can afford to be accustomed to going into most games as the favored side. Not so for the likes of Frosinone and Carpi.
The toughness, mental fortitude and cattiveria required to face much stronger opponents all season cannot be overstated. Juventus can occasionally afford to lose mental focus, assume they’ve won already, and play lazy. Frosinone cannot.
It’s often called cynicism and usually considered a particularly Italian attitude, and manifests itself in the relentless defending known either descriptively or pejoratively as catenaccio. Tight man-marking returns, rather than the zonal system preferred by modern teams. Rather than trying to win, this is a team determined not to lose – and in this writer’s opinion, that attitude is under-appreciated in the modern game.
It’s all well and good to go out onto the pitch with the desire to win, no matter the odds. Heroic stories are made of underdogs toppling the giants. But sometimes – especially in the modern era of extraordinary financial gaps between the rich clubs and everyone else – there’s no less heroism in simply refusing to be defeated.
In Juventus Stadium on Wednesday night, that’s exactly what Frosinone did. They knew they wouldn’t outplay Juventus on individual skill or tactics, so they focused their attention on messing up the home team’s plan. Their determination on defense was stalwart enough to exploit Juve’s disorganization up top and prevent them from scoring more than one of their 39 shots. Their refusal to be beaten until the final whistle sounded let them take advantage of a lapse in concentration and tie the score with only seconds to go. In the defensive phase – which they forced most of the game into – they were often first to the ball, putting a tight, strangling pressure on Juve that recalled Juve’s own past style under their previous manager.
Numbers, statistics, fancy shirts and high salaries notwithstanding, it’s still eleven men against eleven men out there. So amongst all the debate and controversy over what’s going on with the big teams, spare a thought for the valiance of the provincials.
The post When David Embarrasses Goliath: Frosinone, Carpi and the Art of Playing The Big Teams appeared first on IFD.
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