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Juventus club president Andrea Agnelli has announced that striker Alessandro Del Piero is set to leave the club at the end of the season bringing the curtain down on a 19-year spell in Turin.
The news was broken on Tuesday and was tentatively accepted by Juve fans the world over as club legend and Juventus’ all-time leading goalscorer Alessandro Del Piero begins his last sojourn in the famous black-and-white.
Of course the accolades which can be bestowed upon this truly great player of our time are numerous. Bar the Euros, Del Piero has won everything there is to win in world football and has smashed in bags and bags of goals along the way. Click the Link
Del Piero made his debut for the Old Lady in 1993 as a baby-faced 18-year-old and within one season had helped topple champions AC Milan as Juve lifted their 23rd Scudetto before bagging the club’s second European Cup in Rome the following year.
By then Del Piero was being hailed as one of Europe’s finest talents and in the 1997-1998 season hit 32 (yes 32 goals!) as Juve bagged another Serie A crown.
Along with three awards in Italy for his affable and gentlemanly conduct, the Conegliano-born star was by the year 2000, the world’s best-paid football player and a global icon.
Success with the national team eluded him in Euro 2000 and the Italian suffered his third straight UEFA Champions League heartbreak when Juventus lost to AC Milan 3-2 on penalties in the 2003 final at Old Trafford.
Still, the titles kept rolling in domestically as did the goals and performances as Del Piero’s creative flair, assist making and freekick specialties kept coming.
After the match fixing scandal in 2006 Juventus were relegated to Serie B but like a true supporter and lover of his club, captain Del Piero chose to remain in Turin and after winning the World Cup with his country, hit 20 league goals as Juve made a rapid return to Serie A.
Two more seasons in Europe followed as the goals and plaudits kept coming in. Del Piero was voted in the list of best European players for the past 50 years and was (rightly) voted by Pele as one of the best 125 football players currently living.
The 36-year-old has hit double-figures in 15 of his 19 seasons at the club and laudably had offered to play for nothing this season, the inaugural year of the club’s 40,000-capacity privately-owned new Arena, before signing a one-year contract in May.
The likes of him do not come around often and so the In The Stands team salutes a great player of our time as he plays out his final days with the Old Lady.
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