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The modern football in Serie A has been played in patches by Lazio and consistently by Atalanta. Gian Piero Gasperini’s side, implausibly, finds itself not only third in the league (it finished third last season, too, but 21 points off Juventus’s pace) but in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. This has already been the best season in its history and could yet end in something extraordinary. In a football landscape that has little room for real romance, its story is an actual fairytale, the football it plays a celebration of a vision and what can be achieved on a moderate budget.
But philosophies and coherent styles can only take a club so far. Atalanta, with its slender squad, is more susceptible to one or two key injuries and to fatigue than a club like Juventus. At some point, having lots of good players matters. There doesn’t have to be great coherence if you have Ronaldo and Dybala and Matthijs De Ligt and Douglas Costa and Juan Cuadrado and on down then line. But football really shouldn’t just be about a collection of great players. There should be some vision that inspires it, that can elevate the collective into something greater than the sum of its parts.
As the crushing march of the superclubs joylessly continues, the present model of football across Europe seems increasingly unsustainable.
Source link : https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/07/26/juventus-serie-a-title-sarri-ronaldo-italy-superclubs-europe
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Publish date : 2020-07-26 07:00:00
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