Things aren’t going well for Juventus right now.
After seeing their Serie A dominance come to an end with Inter claiming Italy’s domestic cup, to the Super League crumbling before their very eyes, and probably missing out on the Champions League, Juventus received more bad news Monday when the Italian football federation (FIGC) president Gabriele Gravina made a pretty pressing announcement for the Black and Whites.
That announcement? “If Juventus is still part of the Super League when it enters next season, it can’t participate in Serie A,” Gravina says.
Juve remains the only Serie A team seemingly committed to what appears at this point to be a failed Super League after AC Milan and Inter Milan pulled out.
In fact though, over the weekend Juventus dug into their commitment along with Real Madrid and Barcelona referring to the backlash from UEFA as “intolerable” pressure and threats.
It’s hard to see where Juventus goes from here. Bigger clubs have already abandoned the idea of the Super League (at least for now) after said considerable pressure not just from fans and state governments but UEFA and FIFA who ironically enough all seem to be relatively speaking on the same page. Juve isn’t going to begin a three-team Super League with Barca and Real Madrid nor they going to populate a “Super League” with that top three and a bunch of lower-end top-flight domestic league teams from around Europe. You also have to suspect that at some point players will begin to speak out more if they face international bans from FIFA including being barred from representing their respective countries in the World Cup and/or Olympics.
In any sense, Juventus is running out of options.