Abstracts of the article “Del Piero keen to bend it around Chelsea hurdle” Written by Jan Hawkey On Gulf News, February 25th 2009

Last season Del Piero scored more goals than anybody else in Serie A, for a team who finished third in the table the year after promotion. Last November, he was given standing ovation by spectators, including Diego Maradona, at the Bernabeu for the two goals that earned Juventus a second win in the space of a month over Madrid in the Champions League.

“Alessandro Del Piero likes to describe how he learnt to be so clever with his free kicks. His father, Gino, used to park the family car next to the back garden of their Treviso home and turn on the headlights so that little Alex could carry on after dark his private, endless practice, landing a ball precisely on a chosen spot.”

“The renaissance of Del Piero may not be quite the right term of what has been an extended Indian summer to his career. He never started winding down, thought he did voluntarily depart the big stage for a while. He was Juventus captain when, in the summer of 2006, the club he had served for 13 years were relegated to Serie B, Italy’s second division.”

“A few days earlier, he had won the World Cup with Italy. Two months earlier he and Juventus had celebrated what they thought was a 29th league championship. It was not. Revelations that senior directors had been in frequent and improper contact with referees led to two Juve’s titles being confiscated and to their demotion.” (…)

“Now 34, he is not beyond pulling the odd long face when the head coach makes a decision he thinks incorrect and he has had his disagreements with bosses such as Marcello Lippi, for whom he scored important goals in the World Cup semi-final and in the penalty shoot-out that won the Berlin final, and with Fabio Capello. There have been moments of tension, too, with Claudio Ranieri, his current coach at Juventus, not least when, on being replaced earlier this month, he threw to the ground a jacket offered him as he took his seat on the bench. Typically, he explained his feistiness with a moment of delicate humour. The jacket offered him, he later smiled, was not his size.”

“Last season Del Piero scored more goals than anybody else in Serie A, for a team who finished third in the table the year after promotion. Last November, he was given standing ovation by spectators, including Diego Maradona, at the Bernabeu for the two goals that earned Juventus a second win in the space of a month over Madrid in the Champions League”. (…)