Juve – Livorno, Lunedì Leftovers

By: Marco Stucazzo | January 28th, 2008

The Livorno Amaranto Liberation Army didn’t look Serie B-esqe this time out , but a mix of bad offside traps, a dash of David Trezeguet talent, a sending off, and lack of luck was too much to see Livorno snatch some points from the Zebras of the North .

After a rather impressive and surprising unbeaten run Livorno had to exit the bandwagon on Suunday. The 3-1 loss to Juventus and David Trezeguet officially marks the end of the 9 game non-losing streak. Juventus get to brag about their 11 game streak. Livorno came out with the usual 5-3-2 tactics and started the match looking great. The Labronici had some decent chances and looked confident for the first 25 minutes. Giovanni Pasquale had a great occasion to open up the score on 16 minutes when Juventus left side went amnesic and let him breeze by everybody on the left flank only to see Belardi reject the 2 resulting shots. Livorno started the match well, enough so to hear the extremely American Fox commentator say things like; This isn’t your daddy’s Juventus defending !

The attack looked threatening, minus Diego Tristan who needed to change boots after 10 minutes because he figured his new shoes might be the reason why he was sucking hard

The defense was looking organised and the Amaranto* were patrolling both flanks quite well. Then a bad Galante clearance gave Cristiano Zanetti the chance to dish out a splendid pass to David Trezeguet who happily opened up the score in the 28th. Livorno never recovered. Alè Del Piero scored just 4 minutes after the break and, 14 minutes later, he dished out a beautiful pass for Trezeguet to finish. In between those 2 goals, Daniele De Vezze managed to get sent off for 2 yellows, a little harsh in my opinion. So Down 1 man and 3-0 after 63 minutes!

Even with 10 men on the field, Livorno fought well and proved they deserved their recent success. Francesco Tavano hit the post on a set piece, however only Erjon Bogdani’s managed to pull one back for the Amaranto, his first goal in an burgundy shirt, but it came to late to muster any type of comeback. It finished 3-1 !

*Disclaimer : In the I Garzantini Italian dictionary Amaranto is 3 things ;

1st pianta erbacea con infiorescenze a spiga color rossa porpora .

2nd Colore rosso scuro, tipico dei fiori dell’amaranto.

3rd ; Agg. n.m e f. invar.; Relativo alle squadre di calico del Livorno, della Reggina e dell’Arezzo che hanno lo stesso colore

Unlike juventino or Giallorosso, but like Granata, Amaranto is invariabile

Highlights

Livorno – Juventus 1-3 27/01/2007 – www.vecchiasignora.com
Uploaded by vecchiasignoracom

LIVORNO-JUVE 1-3

Livorno (3-5-2): Amelia; Grandoni, Knezevic, Galante; Balleri, A. Filippini (14′ st Pulzetti), De Vezze, Vidigal, Pasquale; Tavano, Tristan (14′ st Bogdani). A disp. De Lucia, Pavan, Rezaei, E. Filippini, Diamanti. All. Camolese

Juventus (4-4-2): Belardi; Salihamidzic (14′ st Birindelli), Legrottaglie, Grygera, Molinaro; Palladino, Nocerino, C. Zanetti, Nedved (45′ st Castiglia); Del Piero (28′ st Iaquinta), Trezeguet. A disp. Vanstrattan, Ariaudo, D’Elia, Tiago. All. Ranieri

Arbitro: Morganti di Ascoli Piceno

Marcatori: 30′ pt Trezeguet (J), 4′ st Del Piero (J), 18′ st Trezeguet (J), 34′ st Bogdani (L)

Note: espulso al 9′ st De Vezze (L) per doppia ammonizione. Ammoniti Vidigal, Palladino, C. Zanetti, Grygera, Balleri, Nocerino, Iaquinta. Recupero 2′ pt, 3′ st.

Spettatori 18.000 circa.

2 bad calls were made on both sides; the only thing is that the Offside called against Livorno (seen here) happened when the score was still at 0-0. Wonder how that would have affected the outcome seeing how Tristan and Tavano were unmarked and both headed to goal. I would maybe add the harsh sending off of DDV who was by far the most dangerous player Livorno had working the midfield.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not blaming the refs at all for the loss. This game could have been completely different if Livorno had gotten an early go-ahead goal, like they should of. No Marco Amelia Miracles today so Livorno get no points from their 2 encounters with Juve this season.

The recipe for a Livorno win is this ; to defend in 8-9, counter attack, Marco Amelia needs to save at least 1 sure goal and Tristan or Tavavno need to pull something out of their ass in offense.

This didn’t happen at all during the game, except for that 9 man defense part. Livorno had 29.7% ball possession all game! A 10 man Livorno squad wasn’t going come back from 2 goals down against a fine tuned (ok, maybe not the defense) Juventus squad. Come to think of it, 5 of David Trezeguet’s 15 goals of the season we’re scored against us. That’s 33.33333% (I have a calculator on my PC) of his seasonal total!

So what does GC Camolese think of all this ?

“Cosa e’ successo? Ci siamo dimenticati che stavamo giocando con la Juventus. Abbiamo concesso troppi spazi, troppi contropiede, troppe ripartenze”.

“Dovevamo tenere la nostra linea di difensori alta per non concedere alla Juventus le possibilita’ che abbiamo concesso nel riconquistare palla siamo usciti bene e abbiamo sfruttato spazi che concedeva la Juve, poi qualche imprecisione e abbiamo favorito loro con le ripartenze. Li’ dovevamo essere piu’ attenti perche’ se lasci metri a giocatori come quelli della Juve rischi di prendere gol, cosi’ come quello di Trezeguet.

Oggi Tristan non era al top e Bogdani ha fatto bene, inseguiva il gol da tempo, sara’ un’arma in piu’ per noi nel finale di campionato che ci vede lottare con altre per evitare la retrocessione”.

“E’ stato giusto andare dietro all’entusiasmo dei tifosi perche’ venivamo da nove risultati utili consecutivi. Peccato perche’ abbiamo vanificato una buona partita”. Siamo stati meno precisi del solito, in questo ultimo periodo abbiamo concesso poco agli avversari perche’ siamo stati attenti. Questa sera probabilmente il valore degli avversari e anche l’entusiasmo della squadra nell’affrontare una gara come questa ci ha tradito nel momento in cui si doveva ragionare”.

Free Translation :

What Happened?

We conceded to much space, to many counters, to many turnovers, we we’re playing Juventus, a well oiled machine

We started off well, exploiting spaces left open by Juve, but in the end our a lack of precision came back to bite us in the ass. We should have been more attentive on the counter and I should have pushed up the defensive line a bit higher. Against a team like Juventus, with players like Trezeguet, you pay for all your mistakes.

Today Tristan sucked, But Bogdani showed some nice things and managed to score his first of the season. The Albanian is another one of my weapons for the final stretch. Maybe the emotion of playing Juve after a spell this positive got to our heads and we weren’t as attentive as usual.

Big deal, losing to a team like Juve is not a disaster for Livorno. (Not seeing GiGi Buffon in nets is bizarre, Juve’s likeability ratings must plummet by at least 50% and Pavel Nedved acts and looks like a little boy, I hate him)

On the positive side of things, Livorno weren’t out done on the field on Sunday and The Armando Picchi was filled with 18,000 fans, the best crowd of the season.

Despite the loss, Livorno remains in 13th place with a game in hand, Thank you Lazio for sucking, other results in Serie A helped out as well.

Now let’s just hope that Aldo Spinelli comes up with a decent midfielder in the next 3 days…