This article is a part of 90min's Welcome to World Class collection.
If you began looking Serie A ten years in the past, last season could’ve been the first time you’d have seen a winner aside from Juventus.
Antonio Conte – the man who took Juve to the primary name in that file-breaking 9-yr run – gained the name with Inter closing season, breaking Juve’s dominance and preventing them from winning a tenth consecutive Scudetto.
What was the secret to Juve’s achievement at some stage in those 9 seasons?
Any attacking prowess became built upon the rock-solid foundations of the well-known 'BBC' defence of Leonardo Bonucci, Giorgio Chiellini and Andrea Barzagli. Gianluigi Buffon was behind them in goal, just at the off threat that bold backline turned into breached.
Yet Chiellini is the simplest participant who has remained at Juve for the whole thing of the nine in a row. Buffon went to PSG for a year, Bonucci left to captain Milan – simplest to go back when things didn’t workout – and Barzagli retired in 2019.
Countless players and 3 one-of-a-kind managers have come and gone, but Chiellini, now 37, has been the simplest consistent all through.
It become lower back in 2005 whilst Chiellini first joined Juventus, and on the grounds that then he’s notched up almost 550 appearances in a black and white shirt. It would possibly come as a surprise to examine that the club Captain has also scored 36 desires and assisted 24 times for the duration of that period, but the ones are genuinely not the stats that he’s regarded for.
Chiellini is the person that celebrates tackles, bumping heads with Buffon on countless occasions in the Champions League whilst the result is on the line. He’s the guy that does what it takes to preserve the opposition out, with last-ditch tackles, courageous headers and – as England found out in the Euro 2020 very last – the extraordinary shirt pull.
How normally have we visible Chiellini with a bloodied head? Or as a smiling assassin playing thoughts video games? Just as he did with Spain’s Jordi Alba earlier than the penalty shoot-out that despatched Italy through to the very last as opposed to England.
