Today I was sadly reading an inter fans editorial acknowledging that letting Pavel Nedved go would be an "own goal" for Juventus. Nedved represents the switch from one era to another. The era where here at Juventus, Zidane was one of the top players and playmaker of Marcello Lippi's team, along with Didier Deschamps, Alessandro Del Piero, and Edgar Davids. Zidane's team won two Serie A titles and reached two consecutive UEFA Champions League finals, in 1997 and 1998, losing both, the latter to the Spanish club Real Madrid. In 2001, Zidane was transferred to Real Madrid on a four-year contract.
The transfer fee was €66m, around £45.6m, the highest in football history. Before this some Lippi-era legends joined; Christian Vieri, Zinédine Zidane and Filippo Inzaghi. Since the Champions League victory, Juventus won their home league twice more and the European Super Cup. They also reached the 1997 and 1998 Champions League finals, losing out to Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid respectively. In between these eras we suffered and even qualified 6th place to the uefa cup and even getting eliminated. Nedvěd naturally moved to Juventus in 2001 for a fee of 41.2 million euros, as a replacement for Zinedine Zidane (the biggest shoes in the football world) who had transferred to Spain's Real Madrid the same summer. He proved more than an adequate replacement for the Frenchman, his tremendous workrate and guile playing an integral part in Juventus' scudetto-winning teams of 2001/02, 2002/03, 2004/05 and 2005/06. He transferred us into the pre-calciopoli era and did it very succesfully.
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I think all of you people felt the same way I did when he fouled Steve Macmanaman and fell to the ground crying. Well the same fear that hit us all when we realized he wouldn’t play the Champions League Final against AC Milan is here today, knowing that he left a meeting very sad at Juventus management’s proposal to renew for one more year. Who can cover that side as well, as proud, as passionately and as dangerously as he can? No one (not Diego, not Rosicky, not anybody). We will probably have an answer by tomorrow but hope for the best because if he leaves us it will hurt our season very much. Specially because there are a lot of young people and no one can guide them better in to a new Serie A where we expect the best. So cross your fingers people and hope one of our best, most loyal and proudest to be a juventino player remains with us during the start of this new era for us.
P.S. If you believe in a higher power ask him for help. Camoranesi is going to renew his contract tomorrow.