Juve-Napoli: usual rituals and 30 VIP fans at the “game that isn’t there”

Bonucci, Buffon, Pirlo and Tudor appeared on the pitch as always. And in the lineup there was Dybala …

19.37: the Juventus bus, which left the J Hotel a couple of minutes earlier, arrives at the Allianz Stadium accompanied by the usual police car with sirens. To welcome the players, in addition to the copious rain that comes down, so much so as to trigger inevitable jokes (“But isn’t it that they postpone the game due to bad weather?”), There are cars of onlookers parked along the way.

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USUAL CEREMONY

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“Let’s go win this game”, shouts some jokers looking out the window. Only the words “Welcome to the game that isn’t there” are missing to make the atmosphere even more surreal. Yes, because everyone knows that Juventus-Napoli will not be played, because the Azzurri have never started from Campania, yet at Juve the exact same ceremony is recited as always. There are stewards and the usual strict controls, there is even a hint of the public. Of the thousand spectators who can now access the Serie A matches (all admissions by invitation), at least thirty did not want to give up an evening out of the ordinary. Indeed, we could define it in its own unique way, because it does not happen so often (practically never) that the visiting team does not show up.

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SELFIE E VIP

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This is why it’s worth being there and also immortalizing the moment: in the third row, two guys wearing raincoats give themselves a selfie with the deserted lawn in the background, while Pirlo and company wait for the canonical 45 minutes provided by the regulation between the locker room and tunnel. Someone also looks out onto the field: Leonardo Bonucci, for example, does not give up on old habits and goes out first on the lawn, as he usually does for heating, followed by Pirlo’s deputy, Igor Tudor. This time the players have not even changed: they remained in tracksuits hanging around the stadium. In the meantime, the VIPs are enjoying the show (so to speak) from the grandstand: the diehard Evelina Christillin and Cristina Chiabotto laugh and joke as if they were really deceiving the wait for the event. There is also Alberto Cirio, governor of the Piedmont region. The maximum thrill that the evening offers, however, is Gigi Buffon chatting with Roberto Baronio.

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TRAINING

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Someone also enjoys watching the formation, which Juventus have delivered as usual: Dybala would have played for the first time in the holder this season alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, with Ramsey attacking midfielder, Kulusevski still right winger and Cuadrado on the left. Pirlo prepared everything as if nothing had happened and this morning he did the last tests at Continassa. The girth on TV reads in English: “Waiting for the arrival of the visiting team”. Who knows what the 181 connected countries may have thought of this all-Italian anomaly. It certainly wasn’t a good spot for our football.

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