Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso always looked out for one another, had each other’s back. They were teammates through almost 350 matches. They won the biggest prizes in tandem - a World Cup for Italy, two Champions League titles and Serie A gold medals for AC Milan. They were a perfect complement, Gattuso’s warrior extrovertism alongside the cool, unflustered Pirlo.
That’s how they were as midfielders, the yin-and-yang who first played together for Italy’s Under 21s in the late 1990s and were still together for the most recent of Milan’s league titles in 2011. A decade on, that club, where Pirlo and Gattuso shared in a golden era, are top of the table, which makes awkward viewing for Pirlo in particular, given he is now Juventus’s head coach and all his predecessors in that job since 2011 have won Serie A.
Gattuso, the head coach of Napoli, stands between Pirlo and a first managerial trophy. Napoli, as Coppa Italia holders, meet Juve - who won their ninth successive league under Maurizio Sarri last August - in the Supercoppa Italia, a one-off fixture shunted into mid-January because of the Covid-19 crisis.
The timing heaps extra importance on it, from Pirlo’s point of view. His Juve have just slipped to 10 points behind AC Milan, and they lost 2-0 to second-placed Inter Milan at the weekend. Juventus have a match in hand, but it is no gimmee: It’s against Napoli, who have crept up to third and, to the delight of Gattuso, scored 11 goals in their last three matches, all wins.
The Pirlo appointment always had an element of gamble about it. He was a hugely admired Juventus player - he spent four seasons in their midfield, after leaving AC Milan - but as a head coach, he is a tyro, a novice, fresh out of his qualifying courses which he sat only last summer. Then came the crash-course, in at the top, with some painful bumps. Pirlo’s Juventus are nine points worse off than Sarri’s were at the equivalent stage last season - 17 league games played - and no better off than Juventus were in the most problematic season of their nine-year monopoly of the title, which was when Max Allegri oversaw a poor start but rallied to a terrific second half of the 2015/16 campaign.
So much for the precedents. It was the supine nature of the loss to Inter that concerned not only Pirlo, but senior players who have been involved in all those titles. “We couldn’t have played worse,” said the head coach. “Time catches up with everyone,” mused Giorgio Chiellini, the Juve captain, ominously, “and cycles come to an end. A 10th league on the trot will not be easy, although we will keep at it.”
Chiellini, 36, acknowledged the defence he marshalls was made to look unusually vulnerable by Inter’s brisk counter-attacking, and outmuscled. “When you don’t win the one-on-ones then you make things difficult,” Pirlo told his players, before accepting his responsibility for the second league defeat of his debut season. “If the team didn’t play to the plan, it means the plan wasn’t understood. The coach has to accept the blame first and foremost.”
As Juventus were falling to Inter, Gattuso was celebrating a spectacular victory over Fiorentina. Or, perhaps just as significantly, while Pirlo was outlining and rehearsing the gameplan that never materialised for the Inter game, Gattuso was surprising his squad with a day off, and a group meal out. “I saw the players were a bit fatigued mentally,” Gattuso said, “and so we just went out for a nice plate of pasta and talked nonsense, unwinding together and having a smile.” The dividend: Napoli 6, Fiorentina 0.
Gattuso, 43, is in his sixth job as a head coach, his instincts about when to act the disciplinarian and when to lighten the pressure are informed by a varied body of experience, from managing in Switzerland, Greece, Serie B and at AC Milan. “He was also a great player,” said the Napoli captain, Lorenze Insigne, “so he knows we sometimes need to disconnect.”
Pirlo, 41, was perhaps an even greater player, and certainly a more naturally skilled one. But he is not six months into being a head coach. When points are dropped, as they have been in eight Serie A games so far, critics see a freshman still learning about when to ease up and when and how to impose his authority.
MATCH INFO
Norwich City 0 Southampton 3 (Ings 49', Armstrong 54', Redmond 79')
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
Heavily-sugared soft drinks slip through the tax net
Some popular drinks with high levels of sugar and caffeine have slipped through the fizz drink tax loophole, as they are not carbonated or classed as an energy drink.
Arizona Iced Tea with lemon is one of those beverages, with one 240 millilitre serving offering up 23 grams of sugar - about six teaspoons.
A 680ml can of Arizona Iced Tea costs just Dh6.
Most sports drinks sold in supermarkets were found to contain, on average, five teaspoons of sugar in a 500ml bottle.
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
The years Ramadan fell in May
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Sui Dhaaga: Made in India
Director: Sharat Katariya
Starring: Varun Dhawan, Anushka Sharma, Raghubir Yadav
3.5/5
yallacompare profile
Date of launch: 2014
Founder: Jon Richards, founder and chief executive; Samer Chebab, co-founder and chief operating officer, and Jonathan Rawlings, co-founder and chief financial officer
Based: Media City, Dubai
Sector: Financial services
Size: 120 employees
Investors: 2014: $500,000 in a seed round led by Mulverhill Associates; 2015: $3m in Series A funding led by STC Ventures (managed by Iris Capital), Wamda and Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority; 2019: $8m in Series B funding with the same investors as Series A along with Precinct Partners, Saned and Argo Ventures (the VC arm of multinational insurer Argo Group)
Company profile
Name: Infinite8
Based: Dubai
Launch year: 2017
Number of employees: 90
Sector: Online gaming industry
Funding: $1.2m from a UAE angel investor
Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
Cricket World Cup League Two
Oman, UAE, Namibia
Al Amerat, Muscat
Results
Oman beat UAE by five wickets
UAE beat Namibia by eight runs
Fixtures
Wednesday January 8 –Oman v Namibia
Thursday January 9 – Oman v UAE
Saturday January 11 – UAE v Namibia
Sunday January 12 – Oman v Namibia
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
The specs
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Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
