Empoli, recently promoted to the top flight of Italian football after two seasons, enjoys his dream debut and takes all three points from Turin. The 1-0 goal is scored by Leonardo Mancuso, number 7, so that the nostalgia at Juventus is complete.
At the Camp Nou, Barcelona is naked again against Bayern Munich and, which could respond to logic, is nuanced a couple of days later when on the same stage the team clings to the agonizing draw that Uruguayan Ronald Araújo gets , a central marker launched in attack to try to find what the forwards could not in 90 minutes against Granada.
After the game, Ronald Koeman knows what is coming. “I will not answer any more questions about my future,” he stresses, very upset. “We can no longer play tiki taka with these players,” he continued. “It is not the Barcelona of 8 years ago. We are not happy with the result, but we did our best. With a little luck we were able to win.”
Ronald Koeman lost hierarchy in the establishment and the next results will mark his future. Photo: EFE / Alejandro García
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In Spain they affirm that the Dutch coach’s days are numbered and that October will be the hinge month for a cycle that never took flight and that was wearing out to the beat of strong starts (first Suárez, then Messi) and a hurt economy that did not allow to reinforce to the campus.
Moreover, there is already a key date, the weekend of October 16 and 17 when the Board of Directors sits before the members in the Assembly. By that time, Joan Laporta wants to have the issue of the coach resolved.
The results of the string that appears will mark the destination. Sacking Koeman now would cost the club 12 million euros in severance pay at a time when the coffers are empty. But the fans’ patience is running out.
There will be four games in 10 days. On Thursday, he travels to Cádiz to face an opponent who already beat him last season and, three days later, receives Levante.
Then he goes to Lisbon to face Benfica for the second date of the Champions League in which he needs to recover the points he did not achieve at the Camp Nou against Bayern Munich. And on Saturday, October 2, he receives Atlético de Madrid from Cholo Simeone, the current La Liga champion, with the yapas of Suárez and Griezmann, two well-known rivals.
The range of options for a possible replacement is not very wide in the middle of the season. Xavi Hernández, who directs Al-Saad of Qatar, always sounds, although Laporta’s favorite is Robert Martínez, the Spaniard who commands the Belgium team, who will not be easy to convince him to leave that position with the League of Las Nations and the World Cup on the horizon.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi with their new shirts and the same goal: to win the Champions League. Photo: Archive
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Go from being more than a club (as the traditional slogan says) to being just another club. That transition, which was worn by no less than Messi, involves a Barcelona that is seventh in the LaLiga table, but that, beyond the points, is going through a much larger sports and institutional labyrinth.
In Italy, a similar nostalgia faces Juventus, without Cristiano Ronaldo, after having cut the streak of nine consecutive conquests of the Scudetto and with a situation difficult to imagine, in the relegation zone.
“It makes no sense to talk about long-term objectives, the main objective today is to beat Spezia, a match that will not be easy, especially since we have not won yet. If we look at the classification it is a match for permanence, we have to be realistic, “admitted coach Massimiliano Allegri, ahead of Wednesday’s game.
Juventus did not win a single match in the first four rounds of Serie A, something that had not happened in 60 years. With two points (2 draws and 2 losses), he ranks 18th before traveling to La Spezia (13th, 4 points) for the 5th round of Serie A.
You have to go back to 1961 to find the last season in which Vecchia Signora spent the first four days of the local tournament without wins. And in all its history, only four times had such a negative beginning been registered: 1961, 1955 and 1942 and the aforementioned ’61.
“We think about tomorrow and not in three months,” said the coach.
Dybala has a good start to the season, but the team fails to win in Serie A. Photo: EFE
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Argentine Paulo Dybala asked for calm and called for unity. “In difficult times there is nothing else to do but be together and act as a team: we did it in the past and we can do it again now, always until the end,” he posted on Instagram.
The team scored four goals so far in the tournament: two from Spain’s Álvaro Morata, one from Dybala and another from Colombian Juan Guillermo Cuadrado.
The whole team adds the same ones that Cristiano Ronaldo already shouted in his first three games at Manchester United.
