CM EXCLUSIVE Marino: What went on inside the Juve locker room?
Pierpaolo Marino was a part of Napoli’s front office for the Azzurri’s epic climb from Serie C, Italy’s third Division, all the way to Serie A. Following his Napoli exit, he covered the same role at Atalanta for four years, before leaving the Dea and becoming a CM.com columnist.
In today’s piece, Marino takes us the behind the scenes of what happened in the Juventus dressing room following the Old Lady’s humiliating 1-0 defeat against Sassuolo.
At the end of each game, a club’s sporting director usually meets with the manager in order to talk about what happened during the match, regardless of whether the team has won or lost.
The meeting is not only held in order to share ideas and point of views, but also to plan the team’s media strategy for the interviews and press conferences.
Depending on the result, the line can either be easy and straightforward, or more complex. For this reason the club’s press agent joins the meeting to plan the imminent TV interviews, the post match press conference and the mixed zone statements.
The club’s press agent, along with the club’s CEO and Sporting Director, picks the players who will answer the media. Again, if the team is coming off a good result, everything runs pretty smoothly and it is not difficult to convince the winning goalscorer or, say, a keeper who’s saved a penalty to answer the reporters’ questions.
Juventus’s defeat to Sassuolo is a different kettle of fish. I would guess that CEO Giuseppe Marotta and Sporting Director Fabio Paratici entered the locker room to hit out strongly at the players.
On top of this, Marotta has also told the players that they would have to face a ritiro (a camp) until next Saturday’s derby against Torino. This decision is hardly ever popular with the players, especially veterans like Gianluigi Buffon, who was the only Juventus player allowed to speak to the media after the Sassuolo debacle, together with manager Massimiliano Allegri.
The team’s captain answered the media questions very seriously and with responsibility. He avoided trivial answers and clichés, denouncing both his team-mates’ poor approach to the game and how it will affect Juventus’ Serie A ambitions.
Buffon was the only player who could say something in such a direct and strong way, trying to prompt his boys to turn things around from the next game. The Italy national team goalkeeper wanted to speak to the media so much so he actually got to face them before Allegri did. That is a curious detail, as players usually join the post match media talks after the gaffer, as they have to have a shower following the game.
By the way, it is also possible that Allegri was late as the former Milan manager was still talking over the game with Marotta and Paratici.
My experience tells me that things that went on in the Juventus’ dressing room shouldn’t differ too much from what I just said. Now, the question is whether the ritiro is a useful solution to turn things to Juventus favor, and what was the purpose of Buffon’s post match interviews.
We’ll know the answers to these questions within a handful of hours.
