If you ask Diego Simeone, he will tell you that he does not often talk about football with his son. The Atlético Madrid manager is immensely proud of the success Giovanni has had in carving out a career in the sport but also anxious to avoid adding to the pressure that comes with following in his footsteps. “I’ve never liked to give him pointers about specific aspects of his game,” said Diego during a television interview two months back. He visits his son whenever he can during international breaks and the pair speak frequently by phone, “[But] we talk about life, which is very important.”
A worthy sentiment. And yet, one wonders how easy it can be to pick apart life from football when you have dedicated one so absolutely to the other. After the younger Simeone joined Genoa from River Plate in the summer, he painted a rather different picture – explaining at his introductory press conference that Diego “lives football all day, from the pitch to the dinner table”. So when his dad’s number flashed up on his phone screen last week, Giovanni knew they would wind up discussing his upcoming home match against Juventus. With Genoa’s first-choice centre-forward, Leonardo Pavoletti, sidelined by injury, the 21-year-old was in line to start up front.
Sixteen-and-a-half years earlier, Diego had scored one of the most famous goals of his career against the Bianconeri. El Cholo’s towering header on 1 April 2000 earned Lazio a 1-0 win at the Stadio delle Alpi and allowed them to close to within three points of their first-placed opponents. They went on to win the title by one. Now Diego informed Giovanni that history was about to repeat itself. He told his son that he would score on Sunday and teach the world about the power of the blood that they share.
That should have sounded like a tall order. Juventus were returning to domestic action after a famous night in Europe – beating Sevilla 3-1 at the Sánchez Pizjuán. Serie A’s reigning champions were already seven points clear of their closest competition domestically, the biggest lead they had ever held 13 games into a new season.
Close observers could see that those raw facts were misleading. Juventus’s recent performances had been uneven, with an overreliance on individual acts of brilliance rather than any great coherence to their play. They began dreadfully against Sevilla, falling behind early on, and turned things around only after their opponents imploded – having a man sent off and giving away a penalty before half-time.
Even so, Juventus hardly looked vulnerable. They were doing what champions do: grinding out results on their worst days. Injuries would deprive them of Paulo Dybala, Giorgio Chiellini and Andrea Barzagli against Genoa, while Gonzalo Higuaín was deemed fit enough only for the bench, but their starting XI still appeared stronger than their hosts’ did on paper.
When Genoa’s manager, Ivan Juric, gathered his players together before kick-off, he made no effort to downplay the scale of the challenge ahead. Instead, he conveyed a message that could have come straight from Diego Simeone’s own playbook. “Against Juve,” he said, “you have to choose how you want to die.” Their response was emphatic.
Genoa advanced on their guests with abandon – racing to every ball at 100mph, crashing into challenges and always seeking the most direct route to goal. Not before the 30th minute would a cacophonous crowd at the Marassi get the chance to draw breath. By that point, Genoa were 3-0 ahead.
Juventus had been utterly unprepared for such intensity. If there was any single image to sum up the decadence in their approach, it was that of Leonardo Bonucci – the outfield player that this team has been most able to rely upon even in its sloppier performances – gifting possession to Genoa in the third minute with a needless backheel flick. Luca Rigoni intercepted and sprinted through on goal. His shot was saved by Gigi Buffon and a follow-up by Lucas Ocampos blocked by a defender on the line. Simeone’s first attempt to force home the rebound was repelled once again by the keeper but he would not be denied a second time.
The stadium erupted as he wheeled away in celebration – but this was only the start. In the 13th minute, Darko Lazovic cut inside a ragged Alex Sandro from the right and swung a cross towards the six-yard box. Simeone met it with a glancing header with a style (if not the distance from goal) that evoked the one his father had scored against these same opponents. Buffon got a hand to it but could not keep it out.
Juventus were a shambles, aptly compared by one writer from La Repubblica to a groggy boxer who had lost the capacity to even raise their guard. Every cross that Genoa sent into the area seemed to find an unmarked team-mate. Moments after Simeone’s second, Diego Laxalt picked out Rigoni from the opposite flank, only for the latter player to fire over from close range.
If Juventus could point to the absences of Chiellini and Barzagli as mitigating factors – two-thirds of the vaunted BBC – then that still could not justify the lack of composure shown by Mehdi Benatia, who at one point left a looping deflection to bounce in the six-yard box, only to then kick the ball out of Buffon’s hands when the keeper lunged after it. Nor, indeed, could it explain Massimiliano Allegri’s decision to start Dani Alves on the right of a back three, with Stephan Lichtsteiner outside him at wing-back. If the manager lacked faith in Daniele Rugani as his third central defender – understandable, after some missteps against Sevilla – then why not stick with a back four?
Juventus fans might been pondering these exact questions when Genoa’s third went in. Rigoni once again found space inside the six-yard box as the ball was headed down from a corner, hooking his shot against the underside of the bar. It was not immediately clear whether the ball had crossed the line as a defender partially hooked it away. Simeone smashed it in at the back post for good measure but it was credited as an own goal to Sandro.
That was the last of Genoa’s scoring. Juventus, belatedly, started to fight back and could feel some frustration over the referee’s failure to award them a penalty when Ocampos clattered into Mario Mandzukic in the area shortly before the break. A goal at that stage might yet have offered a path back into the game. As it was, they had to wait until the 82nd minute for Miralem Pjanic to produce a lone consolation strike from a free-kick. The match finished 3-1, a defeat compounded for Juventus by the loss of Bonucci to a hamstring injury and Alves to a fractured fibula. It is quite possible that the former player will not play again before the winter break, while the latter will be out some way into 2017.
The timing could not be much worse. Between now and Christmas, Juventus face a soaring Atalanta (who won their sixth straight game at the weekend), a derby against one of Torino’s best teams in decades and an appointment with title rivals Roma. Oh, and then a Supercoppa showdown against Milan in Doha as well.
Allegri sought to spin defeat as a positive, insisting that a “proper thrashing” such as this would do his team good for the rest of the season by obliging them to plant their feet back on the ground. Certainly, it has been a long time since they have taken one like it: not since 2005 had Juventus trailed by three at half-time of a Serie A match. He blamed complacency, citing a disparity in the number of fouls committed – Genoa had 26 to Juventus’s eight – as evidence of his team’s lack of effort. However, the quality of Genoa’s performance also needs to be recognised, and especially when we consider that they themselves were without Pavoletti, their leading midfield creator Miguel Veloso and a starting centre-back in Lucas Orbán. Rigoni was a menace, roaming free between the lines of midfield and attack, while Laxalt and Lazovic dominated their flanks and Ocampos led a ferocious press from the front. But the undoubted star of the show was Simeone, who not only kept on finding the gaps in Juventus’s defence but also showed impressive composure in front of goal.
His father posted a picture on Twitter at full-time, showing each of them celebrating their respective goals against Juventus – 6,084 days apart. Diego might not like to give his son pointers on how to play this game but some things just run in the blood.
Talking points
• Atalanta? More like “Ital-Leicester”, if you ask the headline writers at Gazzetta dello Sport. The pink paper is certainly not alone in making the link between the Bergamese club’s improbable rise and that of the Foxes last season. Gian Piero Gasperini’s side have now taken 25 points from the last 27 available, and sit only five behind Juventus before next weekend’s visit to Turin. They couldn’t, could they? Perhaps not – the Bianconeri’s home record since they moved into J-Stadium is imposing – but they are certainly playing a more cohesive brand of football and there are players in this team who might walk into Allegri’s starting XI right now if they were put at his disposal.
• Six consecutive Serie A wins equals a club record for Atalanta but at the other end of the spectrum are Palermo, who suffered a seventh consecutive defeat this weekend. Never in their history have they lost so many top-flight games in a row. Remarkably, this sequence appears not to have provoked Maurizio Zamparini into another managerial change … yet. The Palermo owner released a statement on the club’s website on Sunday in which he shared his desire to carry on working with Roberto De Zerbi.
• Milan fielded their youngest side since 1985 (this weekend’s team had an average age of 23 years and six months) and still made light work of Empoli. With Gianluca Lapadula scoring a double and former Liverpool man Suso adding his fourth in three games, is it any wonder that Silvio Berlusconi seems ever less eager to actually go through with his sale of the club? With each public utterance the possibility of his remaining at the helm seems to rise a tiny bit further. He teased us all at the start of this week by suggesting that he could do so if the club’s prospective buyers failed to complete their purchase by 13 December. On Sunday, Canale 5’s Barbara D’Urso told him live on air that everyone hoped he would stay. “Can I tell you a secret?” replied Berlusconi – perhaps misusing that final word just a touch. “So do it.”
• Alongside Milan in second are Roma, who once again had Edin Dzeko to thank for carrying them through a more-fraught-than-it-should-have-been win over Pescara. He grabbed a double within 10 minutes and now has 17 goals in 18 games for Roma across all competitions.
Results: Bologna 0-2 Atalanta, Cagiari 2-1 Udinese, Crotone 1-1 Sampdoria, Empoli 1-4 Milan, Genoa 3-1 Juventus, Palermo 0-1 Lazio, Roma 3-2 Pescara, Torino 2-1 Chievo.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Juventus | 14 | 17 | 33 |
| 2 | Roma | 14 | 17 | 29 |
| 3 | AC Milan | 14 | 7 | 29 |
| 4 | Lazio | 14 | 13 | 28 |
| 5 | Atalanta | 14 | 9 | 28 |
| 6 | Torino | 14 | 14 | 25 |
| 7 | Napoli | 13 | 9 | 24 |
| 8 | Fiorentina | 12 | 7 | 20 |
| 9 | Genoa | 13 | 2 | 19 |
| 10 | Sampdoria | 14 | -3 | 19 |
| 11 | Cagliari | 14 | -9 | 19 |
| 12 | Inter Milan | 13 | 2 | 18 |
| 13 | Chievo | 14 | -2 | 18 |
| 14 | Bologna | 14 | -7 | 16 |
| 15 | Udinese | 14 | -5 | 15 |
| 16 | Sassuolo | 13 | -9 | 13 |
| 17 | Empoli | 14 | -14 | 10 |
| 18 | Pescara | 14 | -15 | 7 |
| 19 | Crotone | 14 | -16 | 6 |
| 20 | Palermo | 14 | -17 | 6 |
