Juventus’ talisman, their future, Paulo Dybala returns from injury to face Spurs
The Independent|
Mar 06, 2018, 11.28 PM IST
He’s falling. His legs are giving way. The sheer effort of holding off Marco Parolo, a man four inches taller and seven kilograms heavier than him, has cost him his balance. His shoulders are braced right, where Parolo is; his feet are splaying to the left, where the ball is. Gravity is winning.
Paulo Dybala’s last hope, in the fractions of a second before he sprawls to the turf and the chance is lost, is that he can swing his left boot through the ball with enough precision to divert it towards goal from a narrowing angle, and enough power to beat the goalkeeper from 12 yards out. The clock shows 92:28. The score is 0-0.
And as Dybala’s falling, the ball is rising. Rising from his left boot with a weight and a pace that it should not be possible to generate from that stance. From that angle. From a player making his first start for two months after injury, in the 93rd minute of the game, in what is essentially a seated position.
The ball carries on rising until it hits the top corner of the net. By the time it has rippled back down to the ground, Dybala is on his feet again. The clock shows 92:30, Juventus have just taken the lead against Lazio, and a 40-year-old Gianluigi Buffon has run over 100 yards to celebrate with the Juventus fans at the other end of the stadium. It is a goal that may ultimately hand Juventus their seventh scudetto in succession. The player they call ‘La Joya’ – The Jewel – is back.
Dybala’s injury-time winner on Saturday evening was the sort of goal that encapsulates how Juventus like to see themselves as a club: gritty and yet beautiful, functional and yet artful, inexorable and yet unapologetically theatrical. Dybala himself seems to embody many of these same qualities: you know he’s coming, it’s just a question of when, and how big.
The Argentinian forward missed the first leg of the Champions League tie against Tottenham, a 2-2 draw in Turin. His scheduled return for the second, at Wembley, is perhaps the main reason why Tottenham’s slender advantage may be no advantage at all. For as commendably as Spurs played in Turin, a game with Dybala in it is an entirely different sort of game. “With the ball, he’s a genius,” reckons team-mate Blaise Matuidi, another Juve player who will return for the second leg. “At his best, he is unplayable,” says his manager Massimiliano Allegri. “Once Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have retired, I have no doubt it will be Neymar and Dybala who are the best in the world.”
The Messi comparisons are perhaps inevitable, given his provenance, given his stature, given that spurt of pace and that beacon of a left foot. They will most likely continue to hound him, perhaps even haunt him, despite the fact that in style and temperament a much more appropriate comparison would be Sergio Aguero or even Carlos Tevez.
In a sense, the Argentinian has been a victim of his own versatility, expected not simply to score goals in industrial quantities, but to provide much of the creative burden in a team without a natural playmaker in the final third. At the same time Maximilliano Allegri’s tactical tinkering, switching between 3-5-2, 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 depending on opponent, has occasionally forced him out of his favoured No 10 position.
But perhaps the biggest demand on Dybala is temperamental. Juventus rely on him to seize moments, to dictate big games, to offer up the moments of opportunistic genius that you need when you are a team based as much on sturdy defence as irresistible attack. And for the first time, people began to argue that Dybala was still missing the immaculate sense of occasion that distinguishes the truly elite.
Paulo Dybala’s last hope, in the fractions of a second before he sprawls to the turf and the chance is lost, is that he can swing his left boot through the ball with enough precision to divert it towards goal from a narrowing angle, and enough power to beat the goalkeeper from 12 yards out. The clock shows 92:28. The score is 0-0.
And as Dybala’s falling, the ball is rising. Rising from his left boot with a weight and a pace that it should not be possible to generate from that stance. From that angle. From a player making his first start for two months after injury, in the 93rd minute of the game, in what is essentially a seated position.
The ball carries on rising until it hits the top corner of the net. By the time it has rippled back down to the ground, Dybala is on his feet again. The clock shows 92:30, Juventus have just taken the lead against Lazio, and a 40-year-old Gianluigi Buffon has run over 100 yards to celebrate with the Juventus fans at the other end of the stadium. It is a goal that may ultimately hand Juventus their seventh scudetto in succession. The player they call ‘La Joya’ – The Jewel – is back.
Dybala’s injury-time winner on Saturday evening was the sort of goal that encapsulates how Juventus like to see themselves as a club: gritty and yet beautiful, functional and yet artful, inexorable and yet unapologetically theatrical. Dybala himself seems to embody many of these same qualities: you know he’s coming, it’s just a question of when, and how big.
The Argentinian forward missed the first leg of the Champions League tie against Tottenham, a 2-2 draw in Turin. His scheduled return for the second, at Wembley, is perhaps the main reason why Tottenham’s slender advantage may be no advantage at all. For as commendably as Spurs played in Turin, a game with Dybala in it is an entirely different sort of game. “With the ball, he’s a genius,” reckons team-mate Blaise Matuidi, another Juve player who will return for the second leg. “At his best, he is unplayable,” says his manager Massimiliano Allegri. “Once Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have retired, I have no doubt it will be Neymar and Dybala who are the best in the world.”
The Messi comparisons are perhaps inevitable, given his provenance, given his stature, given that spurt of pace and that beacon of a left foot. They will most likely continue to hound him, perhaps even haunt him, despite the fact that in style and temperament a much more appropriate comparison would be Sergio Aguero or even Carlos Tevez.
In a sense, the Argentinian has been a victim of his own versatility, expected not simply to score goals in industrial quantities, but to provide much of the creative burden in a team without a natural playmaker in the final third. At the same time Maximilliano Allegri’s tactical tinkering, switching between 3-5-2, 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 depending on opponent, has occasionally forced him out of his favoured No 10 position.
But perhaps the biggest demand on Dybala is temperamental. Juventus rely on him to seize moments, to dictate big games, to offer up the moments of opportunistic genius that you need when you are a team based as much on sturdy defence as irresistible attack. And for the first time, people began to argue that Dybala was still missing the immaculate sense of occasion that distinguishes the truly elite.
