Del Piero - A true gentleman for “The Old Lady of Turin”

Del Piero went through the darkest days to revive a ragged, post-Calciopoli Juventus, and the day the team reclaimed its place as a major force was the day when Del Piero had to leave a team where he no longer belongs.

Delle Alpi, 4/12/1994, Juventus’s Gianluca Vialli faced Fiorentina’s Gabriel Batistuta. Fiorentina was winning 2-0 when Vialli scored two goals to make it 2-2 for Juventus. The match seemed bound to end an even one. At the last minute, however, a young, unknown striker from Juventus did the unthinkable when he shot a ball right in the air at an incredible angle and speed. The ball flew with such a beautiful curve and extreme force that all that Francesco Toldo, Fiorentina’s goalkeeper, could do was to stand there and watch, as the match ended with a 3-2 victory for Juventus.

The whole stadium exploded in an uproar. The hero of the match had seen his 20th birthday just one month earlier, and he was merely standing in for the great Roberto Baggio, who was injured that day. The young man’s name was Alessandro Del Piero. That final score was one of the many great moments this legend has dedicated to Juventus’s fans. He began as a stand-in for Roberto Baggio, and went on to eventually replace the “God-like Horsetail” as a champion who spent almost all of his career at Juventus. 

Andrea Pirlo once told an interviewer that he liked to work with great people and absolutely professional players. Those two qualities sadly don’t seem to ever exist in one player, but Del Piero is an exception. When Zlatan Ibrahimovic arrived at Juventus in the summer of 2004, Del Piero was eventually pushed out of the main team and into the reserve team, but he never complained, not a word. When the Caliopoli scandal was exposed, Juventus’s ranking went down the drain, and the team’s players left one after another. Del Piero, however, decided to stay and fight under the Juventus flag in the Serie B, because “a true gentleman never abandons his Old Lady.” In his last season at Juventus, while being confined in the reserve line, he never complained, and always played with true passion whenever he was called to the field.

This near-perfect Greek statue of a football player doesn’t know how to give up, no matter how much pain he has to endure. In 1998, his knee cross ligament snapped, and this was such a severe injury it could end his career right then. It could not, in the end, and Piero played on. In 2000, when Italia fell before France in the Euro 2000 grand finals, Del Piero was a sinner in the eyes of most Tifosis, or, to be precise, the Italian team’s sacrificial lamb. However, he quickly earned back the love and forgiveness of his fans with his humility, charisma and football skills. Two months earlier, in a rainy night in Perugia, Juventus lost the Scudetto to Lazio in the final round.

It’s easy to list Del Piero’s achievements because his goals are beautiful and plenty. The pain he had to go through to achieve such greatness is not so obvious. Andrea Pirlo wrote in his biography, “I think, therefore I play,” that Del Piero’s final season at Juventus was a tearful one. 

Del Piero once said he was proud of his father, who was an electrician, and his mother, who kept the floors in Conegliano clean to earn the money to raise him up; they gave him a beautiful childhood despite the difficulties, and it was their struggle that gave him the willpower to keep pushing forward.

Five years after the Calciopoli, Del Piero was still the soul of Juventus. No Juventini could forget that day, on November 6, 2008, three days before Del Piero’s 34th birthday, on the Santiago Bernabeu soil, when he scored two goals past the line of Iker Casillas, the second of which was a superb penalty shot. Those two goals made Del Piero one of the only three people to ever be cheered by fans of the opposing team, after Diego Maradona and Ronaldinho.

Casillas, in a later interview, said, “I knew he was a good player, but what he did was beyond my wildest expectations.” Del Piero was an excellent player, but he could not, however, save Juventus from collapsing after the Calciopoli storm. His goals were not enough to give a weak and wounded Juventus a chance against strong teams both in Italia and elsewhere in Europe.

Juventus didn’t see the light at the top of the scoreboard until five years later, in the 2011-2012 season, and it was all that Del Piero could do for Juventus, before he retired. He went through the darkest days to revive a ragged, post-Calciopoli Juventus, and the day the team reclaimed its place as a major force was the day when Del Piero had to leave a team where he no longer belongs.

In his nearly two decades playing in the black-and-white colour of Juventus, Del Piero went through 705 matches and scored 290 goals. He helped the Old Lady claim 16 championships of all kinds, and he earned the respect of not only the Juventisi, but also that of the fans of other teams, for his pure dedication to his only team.

Del Piero later went to Australia and India, and still played football every now and then. His place in the heart of true football fans still lies unchallenged, as one of the greatest names in the flow of Calcio.